


Armistice (When The Night Is Long)

by LittleRedCosette



Series: Armistice [4]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blood and Violence, Captivity, Established Relationship, F/M, Implied/Referenced Torture, Love, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Inception, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Secrets
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2019-06-20 03:29:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 84,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15525081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleRedCosette/pseuds/LittleRedCosette
Summary: Twelve years after they first met, Arthur and Eames are confronted with all the truths they buried between them, that mass grave of secrets they torched in the name of forgiveness.





	1. Prelude: Arthur & Eames

**Author's Note:**

> Darlings,
> 
> You don't have to have read the stories that came before this one, but they do give context to some of the mess of Arthur and Eames' relationship prior to this story.
> 
> **If you read my previous story, Armistice, you'll recognise bits and pieces of this story, but it is a pretty major rewrite so not much will be the same!**
> 
> I simultaneously know everything that's going to happen in this story, and absolutely nothing about how we'll get there. I think this is a bit different to my other stuff, just to forewarn anyone who has read my other works. Tags to be added, I should think.
> 
> If you like it, let me know! I hope you are all having a splendid summer.
> 
> Yours always,  
> LRCx

.

.

It begins with the creeping quiet of kisses. The whispering whiskers of stubble; damp, warm lips.

Arthur turns into the cold edge of the pillow with a grunt of encouraging protest.

“Decent folk are sleeping,” he mumbles.

Eames smiles against the very centre of Arthur’s back, a thin scrape of teeth just above the sheets half-kicked away in the night.

The shutters are open. Arthur can feel the sunlight, already strong enough to fill the bedroom with a dappled, kindling heat.

“Decent folk haven’t slept here in years,” Eames reminds him in a low, rumbling purr. Those lazy English vowels knitting into Arthur’s skin like a tattoo.

Arthur keeps his eyes stubbornly shut, bathing in the sun’s fingertips and the heavy anchor of a body stretched over his lower half. The peppery smell of Eames, freshly showered and already dressed.

“Why are you awake?” Arthur grumbles.

Eames pulls away, and as the bulk of that welcome weight lifts from his legs, Arthur shoots a hand backwards to grab him by the collar in an arresting yank.

“No,” he says, even as Eames laughs, coaxing his spidery fingers into letting go.

“I have a flight to catch,” he says with only a hint of regret.

With a loud _harumph_ of discontentment, Arthur blinks his eyes open.

The bedroom is full of sun dust, cloying thick from the steamy air pouring out of the open bathroom door.

Twisting where he lies, he watches Eames start rooting through the heavy oak wardrobe, the one with the chip on the corner from being carried up eight flights of stairs by a jovially drunk Forger and a feather-spitting, furious Point Man.

“How much is Zumani paying you for this?”

“Hmm?” Eames hums, throwing a brown blazer Arthur thought he threw out months ago onto the bed. “More than he paid last time, that’s for sure.”

Arthur rolls onto his back, elbows and shoulders clicking stiffly.

“I will double it for you to come back to bed right now,” he says with complete sincerity.

Eames snorts, throwing over his shoulder a peach shirt Arthur knows for sure he threw out last month.

He’s not sure if Eames is rooting through the trash to reclaim these token eyesores, or if he’s buying new ones to replace them. Either seems pretty likely, much to Arthur’s quiet dismay.

“Can’t,” Eames replies, as Arthur pulls himself up the sitting. To his left, he finds a coffee cup on the bedside cabinet, still steaming. “He’s got Olly Bates on design. I’ve been trying to get him in person for months.”

“I’ve told you, if you’d just let me help -”

“Arthur, I want to _talk_ to him,” Eames says breezily. “If you start asking around for him, he’ll show up in a body bag.”

While not an entirely unfair assumption, Arthur is still rankled by the accusation.

“That was one time,” he mutters darkly to himself.

He could point out that the body bag in question had contained an arms dealer, responsible for the deaths of hundreds, maybe even thousands, of innocent people. He doesn't, because that would probably sound a little too self-justifying.

Stretching his legs out beneath the covers, he balances his scalding cup between his knees and reaches over to start folding the godforsaken clothes Eames is haphazardly selecting like tombola tickets. As far as Arthur is concerned, if Eames is going to insist on dressing himself like a third rate solicitor, the least he can do is look like a third rate solicitor who knows how to operate an iron.

He folds them attentively, taking care not to make a face that would reveal his utter distaste for his lover’s choice of attire.

It doesn’t take long. Eames is a notoriously light packer, and even in Belarus the temperature will be pleasantly warm at this time of year.

Dropping the last item onto the pile, Arthur scoops up his coffee and sips. It’s strong, bitter and nutty, with half a teaspoon of sugar.

When he looks up, it’s to find Eames staring at him.

Arthur stares right back.

Eames’ hair is still wet from his shower, slicked back off his face. He’s not smiling, but there’s a lingering happiness in the parting of his lips. The splatter of sunshine that paints him, burnt gold.

Time feels awfully optional in this little corner of the world, where they are safe and secluded.

“And what are you going to do?” Eames asks without commenting on Arthur’s quite excellent folding skills. “Other than pine miserably for me, of course.”

Arthur grins, biting the inside of his lower lip and cradling his coffee protectively.

“I’ll think of something,” he says, then, “Maybe someone else can be bribed to stay in bed until a reasonable hour for mountains of cash and lazy morning sex.”

“Hang on,” Eames scoffs, sliding a hand under the bed and withdrawing a shoulder carrier to pack the neatly folded, stubbornly uncommented upon clothes. “You didn’t mention the lazy morning sex.”

“It was implied,” Arthur drawls, sipping his coffee and sinking back into the pillows.

When Eames’ hand drifts over to pat his knee, Arthur shuffles out of the way.

“No, you had your chance. No more sex for you.”

“God, you’re in a funny arse mood today,” Eames grunts. “I’ll be back in two weeks.”

Arthur blinks, suspicious.

“You said three weeks before.”

“Are you so eager to get rid of me?” Eames teases with a leer, plucking the coffee cup out of Arthur’s hands to take a gulp and grimacing, no doubt at the sugar. “Look, Zumani says three, but we all know he’s a cheap bastard. He doesn’t want to pay out for three weeks. It’ll be three tops, but probably two. Happy?”

“Mhm,” Arthur replies, satisfied. He takes back the coffee with greedy hands. “You need to give me advance warning so I can get my diamond encrusted rent boy out before you get home.”

“I promise to send the fanfare in advance,” Eames assures him.

He zips the carrier with a sharp tug, frowning when it sticks at one corner.

“Jesus Christ. With a day rate of twenty-five, you’d think we could afford a decent suitcase.”

“That one’s yours,” Arthur retorts without really looking in any great detail. If it’s broken, it’s probably Eames’, not so much because Eames breaks his belongings very often as because Eames rarely replaces broken things with Arthur’s patented efficiency. “And your day rate isn’t twenty-five.”

Eames, under the guise of stealing more coffee, drops a sly kiss to Arthur’s temple.

He feels it in his gut, the heaviness of that kiss.

A forceful, hasty affection that makes Arthur pull upwards, body and soul, to return it on Eames’ lips.

“Ar-hur,” Eames murmurs in the cavernous hollow between their mouths.

“Sshh,” Arthur commands, his cup abandoned on the table in favour of sinking both hands into Eames’ soaked hair.

Eames’ laugh tastes of coffee and the sugar sweet of apricots. Arthur draws back, glowering an inch from Eames’ face.

“Did you eat danishes without me?” he asks, disgruntled.

Eames takes the opportunity of his distraction to extract himself from Arthur’s grip, running a hand over his head to smooth down his freshly tufted hair.

“There’s more on the table,” he says, hoisting his bag up onto his shoulders.

“You should have woken me up sooner,” Arthur says as matter-of-factly as he can. The disappointment bleeds through, though; he feels it contort his mouth in a downwards arc that Eames runs a thumb over, cupping his jaw in his hand.

“Thought I tired you out last night,” he replies slyly.

He opens the drawer of Arthur’s bedside table to pull out one of his wristwatches.

“Think again, old man,” Arthur says thickly through a very ill-timed yawn.

Eames’ eyes glitter playfully as he fiddles with the strap of the watch, a stiff mauve leather one with a brushed gold buckle and annoyingly few Roman numerals by which to read it.

“Be back soon,” he promises, light as the sunshine beaming through the window, solemn as the kiss he leaves on the corner of Arthur’s mouth. “Don’t get too bored without me.”

Arthur smiles tightly, and before he’s forced to watch Eames leave, he turns away to stare obstinately out of the window.

It’s mostly sheets of glorious blue from this angle. The white and terracotta tips of some taller buildings peek past the balcony edge.

Eames’ footsteps are loud, then quiet, until there’s only the snicker-click of the door closing behind him.

Arthur crosses his legs on the bed and stares at the searing blue sky.

Eames is often loudest in his absence, nowadays, and Arthur loves this apartment more than any other place he’s called home before, but it’s ever so empty at half capacity.

Outside, Marseille bakes in the early morning, late summer haze that has taken hold.

With a sigh of resolution, Arthur reaches into the bedside drawer, the one where they keep all the watches that magically show up in Eames’ pockets when he gets bored. His phone blinks at him, a long list of emails, of which he’ll consider replying to half.

Guilt swims through his gut, burrowing upwards like nausea.

He can still feel Eames’ mouth on his spine.

He types in a phone number with slow deliberation, wanting nothing more than to sink deep into this bed, with its soiled sheets and the smell of dirty happiness, and not get out of it for two weeks, three tops.

It rings for a long time, long enough for Arthur to pull his knees anxiously into his chest, his thumb worrying the corner of his mouth.

 _“Yes?”_ a man’s voice replies impatiently, gruff and familiar.

Arthur takes a diver’s breath, holds it in the plunge.

“Time frame’s changed,” he says, voice cool and authoritative. “I only have a week. Ten days max. Can you get to Milwaukee tonight?”

There’s a smattering of indecisive noises.

_“Fine. Text me your arrival time.”_

In a flash of petulance, Arthur hurries to end the call first. It leaves him feeling worse, feeling flushed and embarrassed and hyper-aware of the scent of Eames’ cologne permeating the room.

Tossing his cell on the covers, Arthur pulls himself out of bed, tugging on a pair of sweats and padding barefoot out to the living room.

The balcony doors are open, a cool breeze breathing in and out.

On the coffee table, a plate of danishes. Arthur grimaces, feels that swell of nausea again. He picks one up anyway to eat on the balcony.

Leaning on the railing, he stares down at the trickle of early risers meandering the street below as pastry flakes flutter down to the ground from his hand with every bite.

On the balcony across the street, a ginger and white cat sits proudly on the corner of the rail, his tail curling upwards as he stares back at Arthur.

If Eames were here, he’d probably throw it some pastry. He’d coo at it with exaggerated kissing noises and speak throaty French at it, would say awful things like _It’s a French cat, Arthur, it won’t understand me otherwise._

Eames isn’t here though, which is half of the problem.

(The other half is more uncertain, is the half that leaves the sugar and apricots ashy in his mouth.)

The sun washes the colour out of the buildings and Arthur in its warmth, left cold by the phone call.

He’s not entirely sure he’ll get all the way to Wisconsin today, but he has to try.

Everywhere feels so far away from this tiny haven carved into the south of France.

It’s been three years since Eames brought him here, to this place, to this secret sanctuary.

He can still taste the surprise on his tongue, the way his eyes stung and his heart ached and he said, _When did you do this?_

For over three years, this is where he has retreated to at the end of a job. For so much of his life, he’s never known _permanency._ Even as a child, dragged from one army base to another, city to city, school to school.

He hadn’t wanted more, hadn’t needed it.

Now, though, his wants have changed, his needs have changed.

Marseille has softened him, _Eames_ has softened him.

And he doesn’t want to spoil this precious place, this golden _thing_ that has emerged amidst the wreckage they first cultivated.

Eames, waking him up with coffee and kisses; leaving danishes and making promises like _I’ll be back in two weeks._

Arthur returns to the living room, perches on the couch in reach of the pastries and opens his laptop on the table.

He’s barely paying attention as he books his flights.

Jitters vibrate up his left leg, tapping his foot nervously against the floor as the sounds of the blackbirds in the nest above their balcony start to twitter and screech.

Arthur presses his lips together, mentally calculating how long it will take to get to Milwaukee against the time difference.

 _Don’t get too bored without me,_ Eames had said.

That stupid, lovely face of his. Trusting him, like Arthur’s ever been trustworthy in all the twelve years they’ve known each other.

Arthur laughs a hard, quiet laugh. One that cuts up the sunshine into brittle shards around him.

 _Don’t get too bored,_ he’d said.

If only that was all he had to worry about.

.

.

It begins with a slow moving queue at Marseille Provence Airport.

Eames has no idea what has possessed the entire population of Southern France to plough through MPA’s security at nine in the morning, but here he is, stuck between two anxious parents ill-equipped to deal with their five children and a belligerent businessman who keeps scoffing unhelpfully at said children, doing his best to glare them all into submission.

The youngest child, who is probably five at most, has been sniffling into her mother’s leg for almost half an hour. She keeps peeking up through her hands at Eames with big, dark eyes.

Eames has smiled twice at her to no avail, so the third time she stares up at him, he crosses his eyes and sticks his tongue out at her. She giggles, and sticks her tongue out at him in return.

The mother, startled by sound coming from her only silent child, looks down at her daughter and then up at Eames, who does his very best to look as non-predatory as possible. There’s still a good thirty people in front of them in the queue and if the mother is bothered by the stranger behind them making faces at her five year old -

Luckily, something about Eames must project safety. It’s probably the bright coloured shirt, and he makes a mental note to tell Arthur.

The mother smiles and says with her head tilted towards the bickering twin boys in front of her,

“Sorry about all this.”

The man behind Eames makes a sound of utter contempt, so Eames smiles his million dollar grin and quickly interjects over his disapproval,

“Don’t be silly. Kids are always excited in airports. It’s the holidays after all.”

The woman looks relieved, her eyes, even darker than her daughter’s and with the same almond round edges, are soft with gratitude. She winces when her husband has to raise his voice, a slanting mixture of French and English, for the fourth time to break up the spat between the two oldest boys.

“We’re going to Morco!” the little girl says, still tucked tight to her mother’s legs.

“Are you?” Eames asks, and can only assume she means Morocco. “That’s very far away.”

The little girl nods very seriously as she tugs at her hair, which is tightly plaited.

“One thousand, seven hundred and fifty kilometres,” she says, like she’s planning to walk the whole way.

“How do you know that?” her mother splutters, sounding baffled.

The girl shrugs, sucking her bottom lip into her mouth.

“Michael told me.”

At this point they are interrupted by one of the girl’s older brothers, possibly the knowledgeable Michael, and the mother lets out a despairing sigh as he starts detailing exactly how unfair it is to ask him to be nice to his undeserving twin.

The girl, unconcerned by her mother’s divided attention, smiles up at Eames excitedly, then sticks her tongue out at him, so he laughs.

The queue is crawling along. The air conditioning is utterly merciless and sound always seems to be amplified in airports, as if they had been designed for maximum discomfort.

Behind him, the businessman answers a phone call and complains loudly about bratty children and in front of him the mother successfully starts a game of word association with three out of her five children. The bickering boys lose momentum with their argument and after a while, the girl clambers up onto her father’s back, arms slumped sleepily over his shoulders.

Eames watches two bored guards making eyes at each other for a good ten minutes, until he’s pulled from his amused reverie by his phone vibrating in his pocket.

It’s a text from an unknown number.

Not that he has any numbers saved on his phone these days. Living with Arthur has been mostly wonderful these past few years, but it has also cursed him with with a new, practiced level of paranoia that is exhausting to maintain.

He looks down at his phone.

_Have u spoken to O in past 6 mths? L_

Eames frowns at the message.

Leon rarely contacts him for anything outside of job suggestions. They’ve never exactly liked each other, made more difficult recently by Eames’ increasingly strained relationship with the _O_ in question.

Olivier.

There was a time when Eames couldn’t imagine going more than a couple of weeks without talking to her. She had held him together long after anyone else would have given him up as a lost cause.

She had taught him, protected him. They had been partners in a world that did not forgive weakness, and in that they had concealed each others' weaknesses from everyone else around them.

It’s gone, now. Whatever tough fibres once threaded them together. Time and distance and too many ill-conceived decisions have driven a wedge between them and Eames can’t help but resent Leon for texting him.

Can’t help but think about how much Leon must _love_ knowing he’s not Olivier’s favourite anymore.

 _No,_ he texts back.

Taps his thumbs on the glass screen and takes another step forward in this never ending queue.

There's a ringing announcement on the tannoy that he tunes out with difficulty.

The reply is quick and Eames can hear Leon’s voice in it, that round shaped Lanky tone.

_Santiago SH is trashed. Some1 is looking 4 her._

Eames frowns down at his screen, the jagged echo sounds of the airport muting to a fuzz in his head. His heart, thick in his throat, beating hard.

 _When did you see her last?_ he texts back.

_January. Job in Lahore. She said she was going to see you._

_She didn’t._

_Obviously._

Eames scowls at Leon’s unhelpful reply, and is irrepressibly annoyed to know that Leon is somewhere out there thinking the same thing about him.

Before he can come up with a response, another text comes through.

_Keep ears open. Stay East if at all poss._

Eames rolls his eyes.

Leon would happily impose a border ban on all of them if he could. The man hasn’t been to the States in over five years, or the UK in even longer.

Eames would like to retort that he’s been safely holed up in the very non-East French borders for years now, but that would involve giving Leon far more information about himself than he cares to.

He doesn’t reply, which is probably preferable for both of them.

Instead, he opens a new message, taps in Arthur’s number and types,

_Don’t eat all the danishes in one go._

He looks up just in time to see the couple in front of him shepherding their children towards a free space at a conveyor belt.

He slips his bag from his shoulder and joins in behind them, faffing irritably with his belt. He takes a small, unnecessary pleasure at seeing the businessman who was behind him get searched after setting off the alarms not just once, but twice.

By the time he’s got his belongings back on the other side of the scanners, he’s got a new text from Arthur.

He sees the little girl, who now has her sparkly blue shoes in her hands, and grins when she waves goodbye to him.

He opens the text and reads,

 _I’m not the one with bad impulse control,_ which is absolutely not true at all.

 _Filthy liar,_ he texts back.

Ten minutes later, when he’s staring at the racks of ties in Duty Free and wondering which one Arthur would hate the most, he gets a picture message of an empty plate on the coffee table, still covered in crumbs, which had contained five apricot danishes when he left this morning.

Smiling, he puts his phone in his jacket pocket and picks up two ties. One is obnoxiously purple with lots of yellow ducks on it. The other is a delightful tartan pattern.

Checking the price tags, he’s pleased to see each one costs more than some suits he’s bought in the past.

Still undecided, he takes both to the desk, wondering whether he should save the surprise for when he gets home, or send Arthur a picture.

His phone vibrates again. It’s from Leon.

He puts it back in his pocket without reading it. Ignores the uneasy clench in his gut and focuses on the ties instead.

There’s nothing he can do for Olivier, and nothing he wants to do for Leon.

He buys both ties, and puts everything else out of his mind.

There’s nothing he can do.

.

.


	2. Prelude: Ariadne & Dom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lovelies,
> 
> This is kind of a second prelude. I probably should have posted them together, but it seemed unnecessarily long that way.
> 
>  **Please** don't make the mistake of thinking these ridiculously quick updates will continue. I've been doing a lot of travelling for work so I've had a stupid amount of time on my hands and thankfully, that has coincided with inspiration striking. For once! Hooray!
> 
> Still in the *context* stages, kiddos. We'll get some proper plot happening soon, I promise...
> 
> Love love love,  
> LRCx

.

.

It begins with a short distance phone call. Extremely short distance, in fact.

Ariadne is asleep, and her cell is on vibrate. If she had left it in her coat pocket on the back of the door where she always puts it, she would have missed it. If she had had the presence of mind to leave it on the bedside cabinet, there’s a chance she’d have slept through the rattle of it against the wooden surface.

However, on this occasion Ariadne had fallen asleep the night before with her phone in her hand, halfway through a text. It had slid down the mattress in her sleep, resting body warm against the back of her knee.

When the call comes through, it buzzes angry as hornets between her legs and she surges awake with a violent yelp, wriggling away from the device, her heart pounding.

It’s mid-morning. Sunlight, muted by the blinds, strains about the window edges. She left the shutters open last night.

She’s out of breath, dazed as she slides a hand down beneath the covers and fumbles for the cell phone. The light of the screen, blue and harsh.

It’s Robert Sinclair.

Even half asleep, her stomach does that horrid, humiliating flip at the sight of his name.

“Hello?” she answers, trying to sound as awake as possible as she rubs a shaky hand over her face.

 _“You Parisians are appalling,"_ his tilting, teasing voice replies. _“It’s gone half-past nine! The day’s practically over and you’re sleeping?”_

Ariadne sighs, too unprepared not to blush.

“I got back yesterday, give me a break.”

 _“You got back seventeen hours ago,”_ Sinclair laughs. _“You’ve had more than enough time to catch up.”_

“It’s creepy that you know that,” Ariadne scolds without feeling, sinking into the pillows, into that warm and wondrous voice.

 _“It’s creepy that I know flight lengths and how timezones work?”_ Sinclair retorts. _“Get out of bed and answer your door, will you? Your neighbour gave me a funny look when she fetched her paper just now.”_

It takes a moment for his demand to find her ears.

When it finally does, her eyes grow wide with panic, her lungs expand too far in her chest and she lets out an ungodly squeak.

Leaping out of bed, she catches sight of herself in the mirror on her wardrobe.

Bedraggled, sleep creased, dressed in a pair of soft pyjama bottoms and a daisy duck t-shirt she’s had since she was seventeen years old, she considers doing something to cover up.

Sinclair seems to hear her hesitation, because he makes a tutting sound.

_“Ariadne, I swear to God if you answer this door like anything other than the bedheaded mess I know you are, I’m going to shave your hair off in your sleep on our next job.”_

She makes a grumbling sound to cover up the flush of silky pleasure that comes with those words, cheeks glowing scarlet, and hurries to the front door of her apartment.

Swinging the door open with grandeur, she is momentarily struck dumb by the sight of Robert Sinclair, dressed in a pair of pale jeans and hooded sweatshirt, carrying a heavy paper bag under his arm with a baguette sticking out of it.

His nut brown hair is tacky with wax, not disguising the thin streaks of grey at the temples, and those pale blue eyes seem especially big today, laughter lines that do funny things to her insides. There’s scruff on his jaw and his mouth is split in a lemon grin.

He takes his phone away from his ear and she copies him, stuffs it away in her coat pocket on the back of the door, out of sight and mind.

“What are you doing here?” she asks. Tries not to sound wholly thrilled but he’s already seen it in her face and anyway, he looks nothing short of delighted to be here.

“I was in the neighbourhood,” he shrugs, bustling in, brushing past with the scent of hot bread and pastry following.

He’s only been inside her apartment twice, yet he stalks around like he owns it. Like he’s lived here all his life.

“The western hemisphere?” Ariadne drawls as she follows him to the kitchen.

“Northern,” he retorts, smirking.

She never entirely knows when he’s teasing her. His eyes flash in the half light of the kitchen and he flicks the hob on.

“You’re on coffee duty,” he says, flapping his hand at the moka pot on its stand like it’s in danger of exploding if she doesn’t start using it.

She watches as he starts to unpack the paper bag. Baguette first, followed a smaller scrunched paper bag greased hot with fresh croissants. Beneath, a punnet of engorged strawberries, a carton of grapefruit juice, a small sack of flat peaches and a wrapped block of comté.

Ariadne laughs and when Sinclair catches her bemused stare, he blushes. A smear of pink across his pale skin.

“My mother’s Irish Catholic,” he mutters a little self-conscious, in a way she’s never seen before. “She taught me there are two things worth doing for another person: praying for them and feeding them.”

Ariadne raises her eyebrows. That’s more personal information than he’s maybe ever given her in one go.

“You don’t seem like the religious type,” she says.

She expects a laugh. Instead, his eyes are oddly vulnerable, flash of lightning without the thunder.

“Well, exactly,” he says, which for some reason feels even more intimate than talking about his mother. As if he might pray for Ariadne, were he the praying kind only he’s not, so instead he’s bringing her food.

Awkwardly delighted, she busies herself with the coffee while he raids her fridge for butter and milk.

A squawk of outrage echoes from inside as he all but climbs onto the top shelf.

“Ariadne, these eggs are sixteen days out of date!”

He shakes the carton in her face. It’s a pack of twelve and she’s only eaten four of them.

Ariadne waves her arms up at her ears in surrender.

“I’ve been in Dubrovnik for three weeks!”

“You're such a student. Just because you’re a millionaire, that doesn’t give you the right to waste good produce, Ariadne,” Sinclair says and despite the playful tone, his words hit her strangely hard.

She frowns at the empty mugs waiting for coffee.

“I’m not a millionaire,” she scoffs, handing him a jug to pour some milk into.

Sinclair snorts, kicks the back of her knees out from behind her so she falters.

 _“Please,_ I’ve seen your bank statements.”

“You’ve-” she exclaims, but any anger dissipates before it can muster itself, along with all traces of surprise. “Point Men! I swear, between you and Arthur, it’s amazing I have any secrets left at all.”

Sinclair makes a scandalised sound.

“You keep secrets from me?” At her wry look, he adds, “Maybe Arthur and I should trade notes.”

If Ariadne didn’t know better, she’d think she could detect a hint of jealousy in his tone.

He’s laid the coffee table in her living room.

She follows him out carrying their coffee and cups to where he’s sitting on the floor, head of the table, and the stirring in her chest is so loud, a cat purr of contentment, that she’s surprised he doesn’t hear it.

Finally in proper light, his thin face is a little drawn, she realises. Sleepless. He’s not slouching so much as curling, hunched in on himself where he hides close to the feet of her armchair.

Ariadne remains standing, looking at him.

“What’s wrong?” she asks. Doesn’t mean for it to come out so sharp but it does.

The flinch, barely there, barely a blink. He raises his eyebrows, unspoken question. Facetious thing that he is.

“Robert,” she says. Puts down the coffee and moves towards his wary face. “Rob, what is it?”

“Nothing,” he mutters.

“Don’t lie to me.”

“It’s fine!” he insists. Moves quick and has to grit his teeth. “I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not,” Ariadne says.

When she reaches for him he holds his breath. Between them, the smell of pastry and butter. Coffee cloud rising over them, a welcome storm.

He doesn’t respond, doesn’t confirm and doesn’t deny so she says,

“Show me?”

He wets his lips with a quick tongue. His fingers tug a little at the hem of his hoodie and she helps him, cautious. His eyes never leave her face, not even when she looks down.

“Holy fuck, Robert,” she gasps.

His midriff is mottled black and purple along his left side. High up, close to his nipple, a bruise so deep it’s split; an old crust of blood like a seal.

“It’s fine,” he says again.

“Fine?” Ariadne cries. “Robert, you could be bleeding internally. And you brought me _breakfast?”_ she snarls, angry. She's furious. Furious that he would do something for her when he needs help.

Did he think she’d need _bribing_ to help him?

The thought burns and promptly refuses to leave her head, which is cloudy with worry.

“Did you -” she tries. Gulps down air and again, “Robert, you could have just - you didn’t have to -”

“I wasn’t going to tell you,” he says firmly, which is even  _worse._ That he’d have suffered silently in her home while she prattled on about her last job or scolded him for being nosy about her bank account.

The hurt must show in her face because he corrects himself, flustered,

“I just mean - I’m fine. My ribs aren’t even cracked. I’m really ok. I just - needed -”

He falters, finally looks away from her face. Stares at the strawberries instead.

Ariadne gently pulls his sweatshirt back down, covering up the Pollock canvas of his torso.

Then she takes one of his hands in both of her own, very cautiously, afraid he might pull away.

His eyes squeeze shut. His mouth does, too, tucked in at the corners as if to eat up his words before they escape.

“Robert, please look at me,” she says softly, soft as balm over bruises.

She remembers, very suddenly, that she’s still in her pyjamas. That she’s not even run her fingers through her hair yet, hasn’t brushed her teeth or anything.

“I’m glad you came here,” she says slowly, enunciating every syllable like a spell. “Thank you for bringing breakfast. For rescuing me from the rotten eggs in my fridge.”

Sinclair smiles, then, and braves catching her eye. She’s ready for it, the seashore softness she finds there.

“Ariadne,” he says.

She used to think it was the novelty of his accent that made her feel like melting ice cream whenever he said her name.

It’s not his accent. It’s just him.

“Robert,” she replies, playful, adoring.

He grimaces. Looks away again and she knows why. Isn’t hurt, not really, just so very, very frustrated.

 _“You_ came here,” she reminds him. He nods, guilty and reprimanded and tries to pull away from the iron grip she has his hand in. Gives up easy.

“I shouldn’t-”

“You wanted to be here and I want you here,” she says, matter-of-fact. Because it _is._ It’s fact. No matter how many times they pretend otherwise. “I really don’t see the problem here.”

“The problem?” he snaps weakly. “Jesus, Ariadne, I’m old enough -”

“If you say to be my father, we’re going to have to have a long discussion about the age of consent in Ireland because in Canada? It’s sixteen.”

“I wasn’t - I just mean -”

He’s looking at her cheekbone, now, which she supposes is something.

Ariadne lets go of his hand and even though he seems to breathe easier, he also flexes his fingers outwards, towards her again. Like an instinct in his very bones.

“Look, I’m glad you’re here,” she says. “I’m pissed you’re hurt. We can talk about whatever the fuck has you so messed up you’re feeling bad about being interested in a _twenty-five year old,_ or we can talk about who ran you over with a four-by-four. It’s your choice.”

With that, she pours the rapidly cooling coffee and fishes through the strawberries, plucking the biggest one out and smiling broadly at it.

Sinclair is looking at her with a wobbly, dense expression. When it becomes clear to him that she is waiting for him to choose, he says, half a plea and barely a joke,

“Can’t we talk about why the hell you’ve got a Destiny’s Child CD on your shelf instead?”

Ariadne grins as he gestures to the bookshelf behind him. Grins a red, strawberry seed grin.

“We could discuss how they were a formative part of my adolescence?” she offers, to which he lets out an impatient huff, caught somewhere between a shudder,  a scowl and a smile.

Then comes a long, lung-deep groan. The groan of resolve. He picks up a flat peach and thumbs the dimple of its core.

“Do you know Leon Hirst?” he asks, quite suddenly. There’s something almost accusatory about the way he says it.

Ariadne frowns, casts her mind back through her jobs like flipping through a photo album.

“Or Leon Douglas,” Sinclair adds.

Immediately the face comes to her. A bearded sneer, a tough English accent; all hard corners and deep vowels.

“Yeah. Extractor, right?”

“All rounder, really,” Sinclair mutters. “We had a, uh. Disagreement.”

“I’d hate for you to have an actual argument,” she retorts pointedly, sipping her coffee.

Sinclair lets out a rueful snort, nodding in acquiescence.

“He’s a paranoid maniac,” he says with conviction, still fiddling with the peach in his hands. It seems like he’s trying to be flippant, but his jaw is tense, his throat corded with the effort of bad neutrality.

“I remember him being pretty zealous,” she agrees.

She also remembers, abruptly, how irrationally cross Arthur had gotten with her for taking the job. He’d said it was because it was based less than thirty miles from an ebola breakout and that had seemed a reasonable thing to worry about.

She wonders now if that had been a mere excuse for him to discourage her. Furthermore, why he wouldn’t have simply _said_ something at the time.

“He thought I’d sold him out to the authorities,” Sinclair says, dragging her thoughts back to the matter of Leon Hirst-or-Douglas.

“Why would he think that?”

Sinclair chuckles darkly.

“Do you think I did?”

“No,” Ariadne huffs. “I want to know why _he_ thought you did.”

Sinclair shrugs unhelpfully with one shoulder.

“Because he’s a paranoid maniac?” he suggests.

Finally, he takes a bite of the peach.

Ariadne nudges his coffee closer.

“Look, he’s ex-military. Ex-SAS, if rumours are true. They’re all mad. He’s just - worse. Some people think he’s one of the Canterbury Thieves, but I think he’s just an unstable twat.”

Dropping the peach stone onto an empty plate, he starts pouring grapefruit juice into the quite frankly preposterously large glasses he’s taken out for them.

Once again, Ariadne is struck by how strange and comforting it is, to have him here like this. Feels like a long enjoyed tradition, this give and take. Their bickering silence and their arms brushing against each other as they eat breakfast.

Ariadne feels a deep ache inside her that she’s familiar with by now. A wanton bird confined to the cage of her ribs, desperate to unfold its wings. She knows he feels it too, whatever he says.

“Who are the Canterbury Thieves?” she asks instead of pushing the matter further.

Sinclair rolls his eyes a little too dramatically.

Not for the first time, Ariadne thinks he must be lying about never having worked with Arthur before. There's no way they haven't compared notes on disdainful looks.

“Supposedly,” Sinclair says. “A handful a Special Services who broke loose. Pitbulls who were tied up too long and killed their masters.”

“You know, it’s unfair to stereotype animals -”

“Yes, yes,” he brushes her off with a fond look. “I just knew you’d be one of those types. You probably volunteered at a shelter as a kid, didn’t you?”

Ariadne tries to feel offended. It’s hard though, when he’s looking at her like that. When all he’s actually saying is that she looks like someone who’s nice to animals.

It’s alarmingly charming, really.

“Actually I’m allergic to dogs,” she says. “But I had three cats and yes, they were rescue cats. Shut up, cats need rescuing too.”

She’s so busy looking haughty that she doesn’t realise she’s smothering her croissant in a disgusting amount of butter until it’s too late. She scowls at it, oozing down her fingers and Sinclair snickers pityingly.

Ariadne gives him a pleading look, eyeing his perfectly proportioned jam and butter croissant hungrily.

“Err, _no,”_ he scoffs. “I’m gravely injured, remember? There’s not way I’m touching that.”

“You haven’t even cracked your ribs,” Ariadne retorts. “Half and half?”

Sinclair rolls his eyes again, that ice cold colour of winter while the rest of him, warm and soft, leans into her presence ever so slightly. She leans back.

“Fine,” he says, a long drawn out vowel. “Don’t expect to make a habit of this, though.”

He cuts his croissant precisely in half and his smile is grateful, golden.

Ariadne takes a large bite of sweet, jammy croissant, grins big and when he laughs, she knows they’re going to make a habit of this.

“Are you staying?” she asks.

Vague and hopeful and ready for him to pull back again, like every time before. Ready for it like an apple already bruised.

“If that’s alright,” he says, to her surprise, to her fizzy glee. “I’ve got some time.”

She wants to kiss him so badly, jam on their lips, sticky butter fingers and covered in flakes of pastry.

“Me too,” she replies instead, ducking closer to him, to the rise of the coffee steam between them.

Her phone rings.

It’s set to vibrate, hidden inside her coat pocket where she always puts it.

She doesn’t hear it.

.

.

It begins with a long distance phone call.

Dominick Cobb is awake, despite the lateness of the hour. He’s on the couch, staring blankly at the TV on mute, which is showing a film that he thinks it Tangled.

Everything kind of blurs into oblivion once the clock reaches past the boundary of midnight. Especially animated films of which he knows less than the bare minimum.

James, his eight-year-old son, is lying flat along his body where he lies the length of the cushions, his weight a comfort. Even if Dom were to fall asleep right now, he would feel every movement of his son’s limbs, could stop a nightmare in its tracks with little effort.

It’s doubtful he’ll fall asleep.

Every time he gets close, he’s jolted awake by the memory of James’ ungodly scream earlier in the night.

Normally such a sound would wake up Phillipa, who’s so _good_ at taking care of her little brother. Dom’s ashamed to admit just how much he’s grown accustomed to leaning on his daughter on nights like this.

Tonight, though, Phillie’s at a sleepover, her first in months.

She’d fret to think of James having a nightmare without her comfort to wake up to. Already, Dom’s struggling to put together how he’s going to explain to James it would be better not to tell his sister about the bad dream. She deserves that much at least, deserves to know she can go away and spend time with her friends and that the world won't fall apart without her little hands holding it together.

On screen, the characters are almost definitely gearing up for another musical number.

Dom blinks, butterfly brushes. He's just beginning to drift something closer towards sleep, thin strips of sight through fluttering lashes when -

_Riiiiiiing!_

Dom starts awake, his hands reaching for his son’s ears but too late. James is awake, too.

“Daddy?” he whimpers, small and teary with fright.

The phone rings again, shrill in the dark.

Dom kisses James’ dark blond head.

“It’s alright, James. I’m gonna go answer that, ok?”

James’ grip on his t-shirt tightens momentarily, then lets go.

“Ok,” he whispers, sliding off his father’s chest and burrowing into the warmth Dom leaves behind when he gets up. His big eyes peer through his fingers at the TV, immediately entranced by the movie.

The phone is glowing in splashes of orange light down the hall.

His heart is in his mouth. It’ll be Mrs Shelley, he just knows it.

Phillipa, hurt. Phillipa, upset. Phillipa, needing him and he’s not there.

He swallows thickly as he stares down at the phone. The number is blocked.

A cold caller? Or something more sinister?

In a flurry of futility, Dom rejects the call. Keeps the receiver in his hand and glares at it.

He’s considering removing the batteries when it lights up again. Once more that shrill,

_Riiiiii-_

“Hello?” he answers, hasty and annoyed.

Slips into the front room that doubles up part-time as an office.

 _“Am I speaking to Mr Cobb?”_ an unplaceable voice asks in a demanding tone.

Cold caller, then.

“Yes,” Dom says through gritted teeth.

He takes a deep breath in preparation for giving the woman the dressing down of her _life_ for waking his kid when she replies coolly,

_“Please hold for Mr Saito.”_

The hot anger is replaced rapidly with a sickly, drunk feeling in his chest.

Before he can gather his thoughts, there is a loud click in his ear. Three thready beeps. Then,

_“Mr Cobb. I apologise for calling you at such a late hour. Or perhaps it is early, by now.”_

He sounds exactly the same. They haven’t spoken since the splitting of the Fischer-Morrow Empire, less than a month after Dom had returned to his children.

To their gleeful faces and their stony tantrums. To James, refusing to let him leave the room and to Phillipa, refusing to be in the room with him at all.

It rushes back, all of it, like a tide long held at bay.

“Mr Saito, what can I do for you?”

Dom’s not entirely sure he manages to sound _polite._ At least it doesn’t come out totally rude.

 _“It is less what you can do for me, Mr Cobb,”_ Saito says in that delicate, hard voice of his. Like crystal, clear and cool and every second at risk of smashing into shards. _“I wish to warn you that something is afoot. Something that may concern you and your colleagues.”_

“I don’t exactly have colleagues anymore, Mr Saito,” Dom replies, feeling uneasy as he sits down heavily in his desk chair. Swivels in quarter turns as he jitters his knees. “What’s going on?”

_“A little while ago, I was approached by a woman. An Extractor. She informed me that someone had caught wind of my involvement in an inception and that this person believed she had been the one to achieve it.”_

Dom frowns. His grip on the telephone feels weak, the bones in his hand disjointed.

He doesn’t know of anyone else who has achieved inception since their foray into Robert Fischer’s mind over three years ago.

In fact, the only person he knows for certain ever attempted it is Eames, and that was _before_ the Fischer Job. Long before, it had sounded like when he told it, that day in Mombasa.

 _It didn’t take,_ Eames had said. Dom had never asked beyond that, hadn’t cared to know.

Perhaps he should have.

“Who was the woman?”

 _“Her name was Stacey Farris,”_ Saito says.

Dom knows that name. Knows it the way he knows ex-college classmates or friends of his parents from childhood. Not well, but accompanied by the frustrating feeling that he _should._

_“Since then, she has performed two minor jobs for me. I’m calling you, because it seems that she is missing.”_

Saito doesn’t sound particularly worried, or even so much as inconvenienced by this.

Then again, the very existence of this phone call is as clear a display of _something,_ so perhaps he is.

Dom makes a low, thinking sound in his throat.

Saito continues,

_“I do not ask anything of you, Mr Cobb. I only hope that you will keep your eyes and ears open. If Miss Farris has been captured by whomever it was that believed her responsible for the inception, it may well be that they shall come for you and you team next.”_

Dom’s mouth is dry. His breaths brambly in his chest.

He stares at a huge print on the wall of a labyrinth. One of Mal’s, full of spirals and obscure astronomy references in the angles.

“Did _she_ know it was us?”

There’s a pause, and Dom wonders if he misspoke.

_“If she did, she did not hear it from me.”_

Dom hadn’t meant for it to be an accusation. Nevertheless, he appreciates the reassurance, unnecessary as it was.

“Well, thank you for informing me,” he replies, a little stilted.

Saito makes a humming noise, then the call ends with an abrupt, loud buzz of the dial tone.

The quiet that follows is uncomfortable. Full of restless worries that Dom doesn’t feel fit to voice.

He pads on the balls of his feet back to the living room, where he sees James slumped over two cushions, asleep. He considers moving him, but the effort would only wake him and as Dom’s back will testify, it’s actually a perfectly comfortable place to sleep.

Leaving his sleeping son be, Dom returns to the front room, picking up his cell phone from the TV table as he goes.

He taps the screen for a moment, tonguing his bottom teeth and considering his options.

Then he scrolls through his contacts, doesn’t get past _A,_ and presses the call button.

There’s no answer.

He tries very hard not to worry about it.

.

.


	3. ONE

.

.

Olly Bates is already at the hotel when Eames gets there.

He’s still got the nose ring, and it still does nothing more to age him than make him look like a _rebellious_ fourteen year old instead of a regular one. The green tips in his hair don’t help, either.

“Oliver,” Eames greets him with a grin as they shake hands. “I miss the pomegranate side fringe already.”

Olly flips him the bird and rolls his eyes.

“My girlfriend didn’t like me looking prettier than her,” Olly retorts with a smug laugh, returning to his seat at the suite dining table.

It’s littered with maps of the city already, each one painstakingly marked in Olly’s signature colour-coded post-its.

“You’re prettier than everyone,” Eames reminds him. “If shoving metal through your nostrils hasn’t ruined you, I doubt anything will.”

Olly laughs, those pretty eyes of his alight.

“You’re such a grandpa,” he says. “I suppose I shouldn’t tell you about the tattoo I got in Sri Lanka, then.”

Eames smirks at that, making a loud, despairing sound.

“Oliver, if you got a tramp stamp, I swear -”

“Worse,” a new voice interrupts, and Eames swivels on his heels to see a woman standing in the doorway to one of the rooms. “It’s his girlfriend’s name.”

Her voice is full of judgement and Eames groans in agreement.

Olly has the good sense to blush with rightful embarrassment.

“Selma, I didn’t know you would be joining us,” Eames says instead of asking what exactly the girl's name is, and he kisses her cheek, full of genuine pleasure.

There aren’t many Points Eames minds working with that aren’t Arthur, but Selma Theodore is one of them. Might even be the only one.

“It was a last minute call,” she says, shrugging. “Sinclair pulled out. And anyway, I was in the area.”

Selma has always held herself with the strange, reserved air of someone too full of secrets to ever carry more. Her dark eyes are restless with their usual anxiety, flitting between the two men before her, the doors and the windows. Taking it all in at what seems like hyperspeed.

“Which is my room?” Eames asks her, and she gestures to the door next to her own, which he thinks was probably deliberate.

He supposes that’s what happens when you save someone from being thrown out of a fourteenth storey window. They gravitate, like a ship to a lighthouse.

Eames isn’t used to being the lighthouse so much as he is the rocky coast in that metaphor, but if he’s going to be it for someone, he supposes there are worse people than Selma Theodore.

He retreats to his room to dump his bag, even pulls out his shirts to hang them up on the sad little rack, for all the good it will do.

After a moment’s deliberation, he pulls out his phone, snaps a picture and sends it to Arthur.

Back in the main room, Selma and Olly are bickering with their usual firefly energy over the maps. He sees her slap the young man’s wrist when he tries to point out something on one of the contour maps of the surrounding countryside.

“I was just going to do a coffee run,” Olly says when he sees Eames approaching, blushing at the ears. “Want anything?”

“Wouldn’t say no to a tea,” Eames replies gratefully. “And some crisps. I sat next to a right bastard on the flight who ate an entire share bag of kettle chips without offering me a single one. I mean, _seriously.”_

Olly grins, offers him a double fingered salute and leaves, bouncing and flailing with his gangly limbs like he’s still a teenager. Sometimes, Eames wonders if maybe he is still a teenager.

It would explain a lot.

Eames pulls up a seat opposite Selma, who gives him a brief, insincere smile.

“What’s got you looking so worried?” he asks.

Her eyes flash up to his face and back to the maps. The tip of her thin tongue presses against her upper lip for a moment. Then,

“Zumani’s being cagey,” she says.

Her voice has never lost that Portuguese tilt to it, a rounding of consonants that’s ever so pleasant to listen to.

Eames snorts, pulling aside the maps to peruse the notes on the other sides of the pages.

“He’s always cagey. Where is he anyway? I expected to find him here tapping his watch and demanding to know where I’ve been.”

“He’s with the client,” Selma says sounding most unimpressed. “You’ll need to meet her. You’re probably going to be forging her mother.”

“I do love a family drama,” Eames says truthfully.

Selma doesn’t share his grin, though. Her brow is troubled and when she reaches up to tuck her long black hair behind her ears, her fingers seem to tremble.

“Selma, what’s wrong?” Eames asks, all traces of teasing vanishing in the wake of that tremor.

“I don’t know,” she says and he believes her. “I just have a bad feeling.”

Eames, he trusts people’s instincts. Not everyone’s, and certainly not everybody’s instincts have equal value. He doesn’t trust anyone’s instincts more than his own, not even Arthur’s.

Only, the last time Selma confessed to having reservations about a job, they both narrowly escaped death and Eames knows better than to pretend it was a fluke.

“Anything I can do?” he asks and she catches his meaning straight away.

With a glance to the door, she says quietly,

“Keep your eyes open.”

Eames, he trusts people’s instincts. They’ve served him far better than their logic over the years.

Selma lets out a little sigh, scratching her jaw her thumb and pursing her lips.

Eames watches her for a moment, until she looks up at him with a warning in her gaze.

He checks his phone, but Arthur hasn’t replied.

.

.

Ariadne sits in the library, smacking her pen over her notebook distractedly.

It’s times like this when she regrets her resolve to see through her degree.

With regular dreamwork, a growing name in the niche and demanding industry and an increasing impatience for the restrictive boundaries of reality, it’s getting harder to remember _why_ she’s doing this at all.

Arthur regularly rolls his eyes at reminders that she’s still a student and Cobb has more than once offered to train her more formally than the slap dash lessons he and Arthur had given her three years ago.

She could do it. Fly to California, spend a couple of months learning from the man who draws intricate mazes the way other people doodle stick figures, and she’d be set.

Only, this is what she came here to do. Moved to Paris, so far away from everything she’s ever known.

And to what, give up? How could she explain it to her family?

Her parents, who saved up so much money to help her fulfill her dreams. This used to be enough for her. This used to be everything.

Not for the first time, Ariadne wonders if Cobb’s parents know what he did with his Architecture degree.

Of course, his in-laws know everything. But his parents?

Not for the first time, Ariadne idly wonders if they are alive, and if they spent those two terrible years believing their son to be a murderer.

It’s thoughts of Cobb that occupy her as she sits surrounded by textbooks, staring blankly at a group of what look like Freshmen whispering worriedly over their notes together, despite still being in the peak of summer.

Specifically, thoughts of the voicemail he left her yesterday morning.

She hadn’t even noticed it until gone midday, when she had showered and dressed and Sinclair was insisting they go out for lunch.

Grabbing her coat just in case, she’d fished her phone out of her pocket and spotted two missed calls from Cobb, as well as a voicemail.

Jiggling one knee over the other under the table in the library, Ariadne frowns as she goes over it in her head, replaying that feverish, false bravado.

_Ariadne, Saito called me. He says someone is asking questions about the Fischer Job. No names seem to have been mentioned, but just, be careful. Call me._

She still hasn’t called him back.

Sinclair had given her a questioning look, to which she had merely said, _Cobb,_ and that had been enough.

The call had stuck with her, though. Through lunch and a lazy afternoon. Through an elaborately cooked dinner for which they had almost no room to ear it after a day of snacking on pastries like tourists.

Then, later.

After a great deal of awkward mumbling, Sinclair had taken the sofa bed like last time he stayed on the backend of a gruelling job.

This time was different, though.

This time they stayed up late watching terrible TV and drinking expensive red wine. This time they brushed their teeth standing side by side in the bathroom, giggling foamy giggles and staring at each other in the mirror.

This time they kissed, just the once, closed mouths minty and cold before parting ways for bed.

It had been the weirdest, loveliest first kiss she’d had in a long time.

She’d blushed and he’d laughed and the sound of it had fallen into bed with her. Kept her cradled in a cupped kind of happiness that could not be penetrated by worrisome phone calls.

Even now, she can feel the smile there around her mouth. It pulls at her. Her bones and her muscles and her anxieties.

At that moment, she’s interrupted by a sly voice behind her.

“I think the librarian’s about to kick you out for making a racket.”

Ariadne flinches, turning around to grin bemusedly at Sinclair, who helps himself to a seat beside her. He gestures to the book, and she realises she’s smacking the pen very loudly in an offbeat, repetitive motion. There are lots of little blue flecks on the page from the nib, and she sniggers.

“I was thinking,” she says, secretive, and Sinclair leans closer, eyebrows raised.

“Oh?” he asks, half teasing, mostly curious. “What about?”

She means to say something witty. Something funny and delightful that will make him laugh that startled laugh and possibly get them thrown out of the library for being so outrageous. Her mind snags on the memory of Cobb’s voicemail, though, and he’s too close not to see it in her face.

Maybe he’d have seen it even from a mile away. Lord knows, he seems to read her better than anyone else.

“Tell me,” he says, and he reaches up to brush her hair away from her face, which is downright unfair because his hand is warm and careful,while she feels cold and fragile.

“The voicemail that Cobb left me,” she says, staring at the hundred spots of blue on her book, spoiling half a page of badly summarised notes. Sinclair tilts his head in a listening question pose. “He said someone is looking into the inception job. He was calling to warn me.”

Sinclair pulls back a little, as if to take in her full face. The hand that had smoothed back her hair takes her forearm gently. A hold and a half.

“Does he know who it is?” he asks.

Sinclair was the first person Ariadne ever told about being involved in an inception. He was also the last. He had looked impressed, looked _amazed,_ in fact. Then a shadow of concern had crossed his features and he had warned her not to draw too much attention with it.

Especially for a novice, that was a mighty claim. One that could attract the wrong kind of attention.

Rumours followed her, of course, and she had heard mention of every member of the _real_ inception team somewhere along the line over the years. Nobody seemed to know for sure, though, which seemed counterintuitive when working in an industry built on recommendations and proving one’s worth.

She hadn’t known for sure Sinclair had been telling her the truth at first. Not until she worked on a job with Eames a little over a year after the Fischer Job.

The Extractor, Issie, had needled Eames quite a lot on rumours of his involvement in an inception. Eames, whom Ariadne had once heard brag about the thorough excellence of his forgeries both inside and outside of the dream like he was being paid to do it, had evaded her with such elegantly spun diversions that Ariadne had almost applauded him when Issie finally gave up.

He had winked at her conspiratorially and she had known, then, that Sinclair had been right to tell her to keep her mouth shut.

Now, she shakes her head at Sinclair, grateful that of all the people she had told before she knew better, it had been him. This would have been a difficult secret to maintain.

“I don’t think so,” she says. “He said to call him.”

She hesitates guiltily and Sinclair raises both eyebrows high.

“But you don’t want to?” he intuits quietly.

Ariadne shakes her head.

“What about Arthur?” he asks and he even manages to say his name without sounding sullen, which is a first.

Ariadne thinks about it. If Cobb’s called Ariadne, he’s surely called Arthur, too. Called all of them.

It’s not that she trusts Arthur more than Cobb. It’s just, well.

She trusts Arthur more than Cobb.

It's only that he had been _there,_ the whole time. More than Cobb or any of the others. For those first few days of her first ever job it had been her and Arthur, just the two of them in that warehouse. And even after, it had been Arthur who advised her, who guided her.

Yusuf had been mysterious and riddlesome. Eames had been clever and wry. Dom had been, well. A wreck.

She knows it’s different now, and there are plenty of things she would take to Cobb over Arthur any day of the week. But when it comes to saving her life? To keeping safe and sane out there in the cutthroat world of dream thieves?

She’s seen the looks people give Arthur when he’s angry. People might admire Cobb more, but they _fear_ Arthur, and sometimes that's worth a hell of a lot more.

“You should call Arthur,” Sinclair says when she doesn’t reply. “He’s still in the game. He might even have heard about the rumours himself.”

Ariadne nods, finally returning Sinclair’s close, cool gaze. She smiles gratefully, and he smiles back.

“Don’t suppose you know where he is?” she asks.

Sinclair scoffs.

“Nobody knows where he is,” he says. “Come on. You’re not working. I’m taking you for lunch.”

“It’s barely gone ten,” Ariadne chuckles, watching as he starts packing up her books for her without permission.

He shrugs, giving her look that clearly states he has no interest in what time it is.

“Then I’m taking you for brunch first,” he says.

“You’re fattening me up,” she accuses, narrow eyed and smirking.

“Mmhm,” Sinclair replies. Kisses her forehead and shoulders her satchel. “Or just distracting you with food. Whichever works better for you.”

She tries to protest, but really. She doesn’t mind at all.

.

.

“Jesus, you’re still a kid.”

Arthur’s had worse greetings, to be sure. Still, it isn’t the warmest welcome he might have hoped for as he approaches the man sitting at the bar in a tiny kerbless bistro in central Milwaukee.

Certainly not after all the hours and anxieties and airports, one delay and a rude flight attendant; not to mention several perfectly charming texts from Eames that has left him feeling rotten to his lying core.

“Lucky genes,” he replies, sliding onto a stool. It’s a slippery chrome monstrosity, with a horrid rotating seat affixed to a base drilled so sturdily into the floor, it’s probably nuclear blast proof. “Dirty martini, thanks,” he tells the bartender before he can be asked.

Resting his elbows on the bar with his hands clasped loosely in front of him, Arthur turns to look at his companion.

David Ezra is not _still a kid._ Then again, he hadn’t exactly been a kid when they met at a military compound in Egypt over a decade ago.

His eyes are still a bright spring green, but they’re deeper set in a paunchy face, now. There are gravity stretched lines around his mouth and his hair, still regulation cut, is liberally salted at the temples and crown.

Ezra was always broad, a powerful hulk of muscle and meat. It isn’t the same anymore.

He’s softened not only in his cheeks, but in his gut and arms, too. He’s sagging, or perhaps that’s just the droop of his shoulders as he slumps in a defeated stoop over the bar, his hands cupping an empty pint glass.

“I almost didn’t think you’d come,” Ezra says, dark brows furrowed over suspicious eyes.

Arthur accepts his martini with a thin smile. He doesn’t mean to drain it when he takes his first sip. Nevertheless, by the time the glass touches the bar again, it’s empty.

He circles a _next one_ motion to the bartender.

“And one of his,” he adds, gesturing Ezra’s empty glass.

“Long flight?” Ezra asks with a snort.

“A tiresome one,” Arthur replies evasively.

He’s positive Ezra has no idea where exactly he’s based these days. It doesn’t hurt to be cautious, though.

Arthur hasn’t lasted this long by being generous with his trust.

“I don’t have a lot of time,” Arthur says pointedly, drumming his thumbs against each other.

The bar, full of dim, bronze light.

The music playing just a little too loud and behind them, a large group of businessmen jeering at each other. The knots of their ties loosened, their shirts tucked in better than their manners.

“I told you this was delicate,” Ezra says under his breath, his eyes on the bartender pulling his pint in a long stream of gold.

“And I told you never to contact me again,” Arthur reminds him.

“Bullshit,” Ezra snaps. “You can’t just walk away from this, Hewitt-”

“Arthur,” Arthur retorts sharply, in a tug of instinct so violent it sloshes the vodka in his belly.

“What?”

The bartender slides their drinks to them with an unobtrusively helpful look. When neither man offers more than a grunt of thanks, he returns to the other end of the bar, where two women are chatting, seemingly oblivious to his attention.

Arthur grits his teeth, circling a fingertip around the fragile edge of his glass.

“It’s Arthur, now,” he says with cutting disgruntlement.

Ezra’s eyes narrow. He shapes his mouth silently around the syllables like it's an entirely new word in his vocabulary.

“Alright, _Arthur,”_ he says after a moment, his dislike evident in the dry roll of the _A._ Then he pauses again, a longer silence, filled by the laughter of the men behind them.

Arthur glances to his right to see Ezra staring into his untouched pint.

It’s been a long time since Arthur looked at this man. Enough time, he thinks, to soften some of the biting resentment that had clawed him open from the inside as a younger man.

He looks at this man now and sees the long game that has played havoc upon those ill equipped to handle it, those binding, winding rules that snaked themselves around Arthur like a cobra, left him breathless in the wake of the Kenyan sandstorm that swallowed them all whole.

Ezra looks rather like he never fully escaped those clutches, as if he has carried their weight all these years and is only now realising the burden is too great to bear. He stares morosely into the fizzing head of his beer, undoubtedly aware of Arthur's gaze and doing nothing about it.

Without looking up from his drink, Ezra says, in a wooden voice,

“Aldman’s disappeared.”

Of all the things he could have said, this is perhaps the most surprising of all, for many reasons.

“He was disavowed years ago,” Arthur says blankly.

He had assumed Aldman disappeared a long time ago, had quadruple checked Aldman was history before returning to the cloaked daggers of dreamshare at all.

“He was still on the military radar,” Ezra says, his fingers tightening around his pint.

Worry like a burn. Arthur’s on his feet before his thoughts can catch up. His heart stutters and Ezra grabs his shoulder hard, pushing him back down into his seat.

“It’s not what you think,” he scorns.

Arthur’s scalp is prickling. His mouth is sand and ice, alarms like bells inside him.

“You said you got out. You said you were-”

“I did,” Ezra hisses, eyes over his shoulder, over Arthur’s shoulder and back again; over the bar and out of the door. “I am. But Ashton stayed, and he’s kept me informed.”

Arthur stares at his old superior, at his childish innocence and the hopeful apology in his eyes.

“Have you-”

“Of course not.”

Ezra looks offended that Arthur’s asking at all, but how could he not?

Every shred of his existence hinges on his invisibility from the men and women who first taught him what a PASIV was. What it could do, what he could do with it.

Fear a hummingbird and a hornet, the flutter bite of his heart.

He wants to leave. He wants to get up and leave; fly back to Marseille and wait for Eames to come home, like he should be doing.

(Guilt a viper, too.)

“I’m not going to help you find him,” Arthur says, horrified by the tremble in his voice.

He tries to mask it by clearing his throat. He wonders absently if Ezra will think he’s a coward, or if he’ll suspect there’s more to Arthur’s fear than nightmares of desert fires in the icy moon of Africa.

“That’s not it.”

“Then what?”

Ezra’s grim eyes, their wet slide from Arthur’s face to his still untouched lager.

“I think he’s done something to me.”

Arthur laughs. It’s chafes his throat, a horrible chiding sound that flashes anger in Ezra’s eyes but he can’t help it.

“You seriously think _Aldman_ extracted from you? What could he possibly -”

“Not - hmm,” Ezra huffs, shrinking turtle shy into his shoulders and ducking his head closer to his glass.

Arthur could laugh again, only it already tastes like copper in his mouth.

“You think he incepted you?” he scoffs mirthlessly, with even some measure of resentment.

He might have considered it impossible when Cobb bullied him into it, but even now Arthur feels uncomfortably possessive about  the whole idea, as if they had not only achieved it first, but had in fact invented the very concept.

“Fuck - you, you know what I mean,” Ezra mutters with snarling resentment.

Arthur pulls a lemon twist face into his glass.

“Not really. What could possibly make you think -”

Then Ezra moves his hand. He moves his hand quickly, inwards. It’s a movement that is so universally recognisable, Arthur reacts without even noticing.

Ezra’s hand is inside his inner jacket pocket and Arthur takes hold of his wrist like the nape of a cobra, punishingly strong, pinching tight.

“Woah there, cowboy,” Ezra says with a startled laugh of fright, breathless and wide-eyed. He withdraws his empty hands, jazz finger wide. “Just a wallet.”

Barely reassured, Arthur loosens his grip on Ezra’s arm. A little further down, the bartender eyes them both with lazy suspicion.

Ezra slowly extracts his wallet.

Leather, worn. A loved thing, same as his jacket and his shoes. He’s out of place here. Surrounded by bankers and corporate cards. Next to Arthur, who bought the suit he’s wearing with money he made stealing a man’s livelihood right out of his head.

“What’s in the wallet?” Arthur asks, voice tight with supposition.

Mutely, Ezra pulls out a photo of three grinning children.

They’re perched on a big flat rock at the edge of a river. A girl of maybe eight, a younger boy and between them, a baby waving a fist in the air.

“Cute kids,” Arthur says dismissively, although it’s true. They are very cute.

Hardly enough to get his paternal instincts reeling but then again, the only child who’s ever managed that is James Cobb. Not even his sister evokes the same feelings in Arthur, sweet and charming as she is.

Still, Ezra looks proud as punch at them, stroking their faces with a rough thumb. It doesn’t seem right, having their photograph out in a place like this. A place where the lights are purple dark and the stems of the bar stools look like cut down stripper poles.

“Hannah, Martin and Walter,” Ezra says, pointing to them each in turn. “Walt turned two a few weeks ago.”

“Let me guess, you don’t remember them?” Arthur drawls sarcastically through his vodka.

Even as he says it, he feels like an asshole.

“Damnit Hew - Arthur,” Ezra snaps. He sounds angry, but he just looks desperate. It’s a sorry sight to behold, his damp forehead and his rabbit pouchy eyes. “Beth, my wife. Bethan. She, she’s gone. Took the kids down to her mom’s in Florida.”

“Why?”

Ezra squirms a little, gazing at his children for a second longer, then putting the photo away. He leaves his wallet on the bar.

“It’s been, difficult,” he admits with all the pleasure of pulling teeth. “I’ve been having these dreams. And I thought that’s all they were, but then - there are things. Memories. Least I thought they were, only nobody else remembers them.

“And there are things I can’t remember, that I should remember. Like, like Hannah being born.”

Ezra closes his eyes against the confession.

Arthur watches him, solemn and focused. He’s aware, very aware, of every single person in the room. Of their distractions and directions. Raucous laughter and low flirtations.

Ezra says, even quieter,

“I know I was there. I know I held Beth’s hand and I know she nearly broke my fingers. We both cried and she, I know I was there. But the memory’s gone.”

He sounds like a man possessed. Not only that, he sounds like he’s been tipped upside down and emptied first.

And Arthur, he feels for the guy, he really does. But he’s also an asshole and with a sigh, he shrugs.

“What do you want me to do about it?”

Ezra looks choked up, scoffing around his wretched demand like Arthur couldn’t see it coming a mile away.

“I want you to go under with me,” he says, frowning. “Into my head. I want you to see if you can find anything.”

It’s nothing Arthur hasn’t heard before.

On any other day, with any other person, maybe he would have said a simple _Yes._ Hell, if it had been Cobb or Belfry, even maybe Ariadne, he’d have nodded and said, _Of course._

If it had been Eames, he’d have done it whether Eames liked it or not.

It’s not Eames, though. It’s not Cobb or Belfry or Ariadne. It’s David Ezra, formerly Captain, who once put his hand on the back of Arthur’s neck and squeezed so hard, Arthur can still feel it in his spine to this day.

So instead, he looks at his drink, swirling dregs in a fingertip frost glass and says,

“I haven’t got one with me.”

It’s Ezra’s turn to look at him. To stare gobsmacked at him with such a visceral, hurtful vengeance.

“You’re lying,” he says, gasp, aghast. “You’re goddamn lying to me right now.”

Arthur bites the very edges of tongue, like he’s teething. He stares into his glass and hates himself more than he has done in a long time.

“Yes, I am,” he replies, clearing his throat.

Ezra laughs. It’s a dull, ugly sound. There’s no triumph in it, no scorn either.

“So can we do this?” he asks, pleads, actually pleads.

It should feel good, to hear him ask like that, to hear him need Arthur the way he once reviled him. It just makes Arthur feel sick, especially when he continues,

“Arthur, please. I know, OK? I know you don’t want to get mixed up in that crap again. I’m not asking you to go after the guy. Just go after what he did inside here.”

He taps his forehead as he says it, finger right in his blind third eye.

Arthur gives him a slow, steady look.

 _“If_ he did something,” Arthur corrects him archly.

Ezra grimaces uncomfortably.

“If,” he concedes.

Then he lets out a loud, whistling breath. Relief. Triumph.

“Thank you,” he says, so sincerely it makes everything worse.

Arthur doesn’t want this man’s gratitude, he wants his absence.

“You don’t have to pay me,” he says grudgingly. “But you do need to pay for the somnacin."

Family man or not, Arthur isn’t forking out a fortune for him and he doesn’t feel in the least bit guilty about it.

Ezra seems to have expected as much, because he doesn’t even blink.

“Done,” he agrees, shaking Arthur’s hand once.

Arthur stands up, draining his martini and fishing for some bills in his wallet.

“I need to get out of here,” he says, dropping several twenties onto the bar. “Meet me at the hotel tomorrow and we’ll take a look. I’ll text you.”

He leaves without listening to Ezra’s reply. Out, into the slap of the night air.

The city trembles and croons and Arthur stuffs his hands into his pockets as he walks. Pulls out his phone and stares at the texts from Eames.

There’s a photo of his shirts hanging in a dingy little wardrobe, followed an hour later by a text that says,

_Z got us a 3* suite. You wouldn’t survive. They don’t even have a trouser press._

Then, from several hours later, another picture. This one is of Olly Bates, who’s lost the pink bangs and replaced the look with mint green tips that make him look like he’s been dipped in acid. He’s smiling at the camera and waving.

Added to the photo is,

_OB thanks you for not coming to look for him. Says he likes having four limbs and two nuts._

Arthur stops at a traffic crossing, cars whizzing past in whirls of colours and lights.

 _Stop sending face photos,_ he texts back, and he doesn’t even get a chance to relish any vindictive pleasure out of the action before he feels awful.

It’s not Eames’ fault Arthur’s stuck in Wisconsin with a man he vowed he’d never speak to again.

In fact, it’s the complete _opposite_ of Eames’ fault. He would have moved every mountain in Europe to stop Arthur from coming here, which is exactly why Arthur hasn’t told Eames.

Guilt boils horribly in his gut, pot of nausea spawning outwards through him.

Arthur swallows, cold air nipping his throat as the vodka starts to hit him.

He half expects Eames to call him, maybe even wants him to. Because then the truth would come spilling out, Arthur wouldn’t be able to stop it, wouldn’t even try.

Eames will be pissed, but he’ll understand. He’ll forgive Arthur and then Arthur can do this thing and come back home and have lots of sex and eat lots of danishes and he’ll never have to see David Ezra again.

Only, Eames doesn’t call.

It’s mid-morning the following day over there, he’ll be awake by now.

Arthur hurries back to the hotel, feeling bizarrely scolded by the silence.

Barely manages to crawl out of his clothes, his lungs knotted airless and painful in his chest, before falling asleep on top of the covers.

.

.

 


	4. TWO

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ooh thank you for your lovely reviews ladylolabean, icarusinflight and ArtOfWar! They all mean a lot to me.
> 
> Apparently I'm on a bit of a streak, so I guess I'll try keep it up? I have some other stories to update, so I'll do my best.
> 
> Love love,  
> LRCx

.

.

Something is going on with Arthur.

One snappy text message has never been enough to get Eames riled up. Hell, a week of snappy texts isn’t enough to really _worry_ Eames by any stretch, especially not from Arthur.

Arthur’s a snappy person, always has been.

No, what worries Eames is that as well as being snappy, Arthur is also being evasive.

Arthur is not an evasive person by nature. In fact, Arthur is probably the most direct person Eames knows. What with Eames making up fifty percent of their relationship, it’s not like there’s any room for Arthur to start getting facetious all the day and night long.

Yet when Eames had suggested instead of coming back to Marseille immediately, they rather meet in Madrid for some we _ll earned R &R,_ Arthur had replied succinctly with,

_You don’t even know when you’re finishing the job._

_Poor effort, darling,_ Eames had texted back with malefic pleasure before returning his attention to Selma’s notes.

He doesn’t know what he’s done to earn Arthur’s ire, but he’s certain it’s more than just texting him that photo of Olly.

Eames stares at Selma’s margins, soon finds himself doodling her capital alphabet on a piece of scrap paper. Her _Hs_ are weird. She seems to start at the end and loop back over herself.

After a few goes, he gets it neatly in line with the other letters and stares blankly at the row of curls.

She was right on that first day. Zumani _is_ being cagey.

First he’d been suspiciously decent to Eames when going over details of the job. The client with her inheritance feud and the mysterious disappearance of her eldest brother.

Usually it would be enough to have Eames hooked, distracted. Positively _thrilled,_ even. He might not have noticed Zumani was being odd at all.

Except then Olly had returned bearing coffee and tea and crisps and Zumani had barely even acknowledged his presence. Olly hadn’t even seemed surprised, hadn’t seemed bothered by this albeit mild ostracisation from their Extractor.

It hasn't gotten better since. 

Only earlier today, Zumani had summoned the Point and Architect like a death knell looming, all eyebrows and throaty coughs, leaving Eames alone with his thoughts, his notes and his grumpy Arthur texts.

In that moment, as Eames is tracing back over the very satisfying shape of Selma’s capital _Fs_  on his scrap paper, the door to the suite flies open and in walks Olly, ruddy faced and a mouth full of stones. In  _storms_ Olly, more to the point.

Eames watches him stomp to his table, shrouded in storm clouds, and throw himself into a seat, hands threading through his hair, feathery tufts of green sticking out from between his fingers.

He seems resolutely determined to ignore Eames, which as far as Eames is concerned is an outright invitation to be spoken to.

So he says, indelicately,

“Everything alright?”

Arthur calls it his _Sergeant Major voice._ He used to use it on Cobb all the time. Gave up eventually. The effect was less satisfying given that Cobb rarely noticed that kind of thing.

Olly notices, though. His eyes, thunderous, find Eames briefly. Find him sorely lacking by the looks of it.

“Fine,” he mutters, dark as sin. Bows his head close to his papers and tucks his shoulders up to his burning ears.

Eames snorts disbelievingly, leafs through the pages of his notes absently and continues to stare shamelessly at the young man.

Olly’s vibrating with anger. Jabbing the pages of his blueprints with a heavy pen and scratching out words like they’re being forced from his hand.

He licks his lips several times, flash of metal in his tongue that not even Eames is stupid enough to tease him about right now. He’ll store that one for later.

Eames likes Olly. Likes his obscure architecture and his colourful dreams. His Manchester accent and the fact he’s still dating the first girl he ever kissed when he was twelve, if he’s to be believed.

Likes that he’s a university dropout turned dream thief, the same as Eames. Only he did it for the whimsy and not as a spiteful move against his father, the way Eames did.

“Oliver,” Eames says, now, and Olly twitches at it for the first time since Eames called him by his full name, the day they met, just to see what would happen.

Eames says his name again, rabid dog soothing and Olly lashes out with predictable vigour.

“Fuck off, Eames. I’m not in the mood.”

Eames puts his papers down on the flat arm of his chair. Walks over to the table and stands beside Olly’s hunched spine.

Olly curves his neck further down, hiding from Eames’ prying eyes.

His handwriting is spiky, tiny. Even Eames has always struggled to copy it. Not like Selma’s elegant lettering, lavish and tricky as it is.

“Olly, tell me what’s going on,” Eames says.

But Olly doesn’t respond.

His nose must be squashed against the table, he’s leaning so far over. His shoulders are hitching with his failed attempts to calm down and when Eames puts a hand on his shoulder he tries to shrug him off with a surprising amount of aggression for one joint of his body.

Doesn’t try a second time, though, when Eames puts it back again.

He stops writing. Eames’ hand bleeds warmth through his t-shirt and he sits back a little into the pressure, without looking up. Snaking out from beneath his top, up his neck like a turret of a whirlwind, is the purple grey shading of a tattoo.

The hotel suite is dreadfully quiet, only Olly’s sharp breaths and Eames’ thudding heart to be heard. Although Eames is fairly certain only he can hear the blood pulsing through his throat so rapidly.

Something is very, very wrong.

“Olly, if something’s going on that I don’t know about -”

Then Olly looks up at him. Looks up, neck twisting awkwardly. Looks at him baby face, that stupid nose ring. His eyes green and brown and amber and full of a very particular cloud of emotion.

A terrible, drowning look of guilt.

Eames feels a punch of betrayal in his gut, and for a moment he doesn’t know why.

Then, muffled, yet so loud it pierces bird loud in a silent sky.

A door slams down the corridor.

A shrill, echoing scream.

_“EAMES!”_

Olly’s face curls with that nasty terror, that absolute guilt and he chokes on a downwards, demanding word.

 _“Run,”_ he whispers, like it might be his last.

Eames doesn’t need telling twice.

He’s out of the door before he can fully comprehend Olly’s rasping apology that follows him out into the corridor.

Heart between his teeth, breathless, carpet burn through his shoes.

Selma, trapped against the wall with two thick hands around her throat. She’s got one hand around her attacker’s neck and another smashed against his face as her own purples with pressure.

Her legs are kicking wildly out at the mean meat of the man’s body, struggling with consciousness and Eames could tackle him away, could scoop him at the waist with a running thud. But there’s another man running straight down the corridor towards Eames.

Eames who, _fuck,_ doesn’t have any kind of weapon on him. Careless, graceless.

He takes off, heavy footed, hurtling towards the emergency stairs and he realises, clarity like a clear stream, they must need him alive because no firing shots follow after him.

Just that second set of footsteps, harsh panting breaths.

Burst open door, smack clatter bang.

He staggers down the staircase, swinging and catching at the centre rail to propel himself as he slips and leaps downwards.

The man follows and Eames, he knows better than to look back but the temptation is there, there like an itch on the back of his neck, a new tattoo burrowing beneath his skin.

Sweat slicks down his back. He can’t think of anything except the bottom of these stairs, reaching them without falling. They’re fast approaching. His knees are weak and his hands are strong.

He skids in a bullish, teetering falter.

Someone’s several flights below him. Someone’s running _up_ the stairs, too.

He looks down through the centre of the spiral of stairs, past the chipped blue railings and sees him, his hand and arm. Hear’s his lunging steps.

“Shit,” Eames hisses and from above him those chanting footsteps get closer.

He pulls back, fists clenched at the ready.

His brain is fuzzy, his lungs exerted. Sweat and spittle, rapid blinks. He sees a body rush towards him and he swings. Pulls back and pushes and scrawny pinching hands push back. Knuckles catch his cheek and the burst of pain feels more like a boost of adrenaline.

He takes the man’s arm in his grip, swings him sideways and with practiced aim he kicks him down the next set of stairs towards the new attacker.

Eames turns, deciding to chance it back up to the next floor. There’s a man standing up at the top of the next flight, gun in hand.

It’s cocked. Eames can feel its barrel pressed against his forehead even from a distance.

The man’s mouth is bloody. So are his hands.

“You aren’t going to kill me,” Eames wheezes with confidence, with vile, anxious hatred at the thought of Selma’s dying breath being squeezed out of her tiny body by those bloody hands.

“No,” the man agrees.

Behind the man, suddenly, stands Zumani. His shaved head and thick beard, his look of utter distaste. Almost impassive, it’s so withdrawn.

“How much am I worth?” Eames asks. Conversational, calculating.

Behind him, Eames can hear both men shifting on their feet. One bruised and the other breathless.

“More than you would think,” Zumani replies, that deep unwavering voice of his, even now, calm as an undisturbed lake surface.

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Eames says. “I have a pretty high sense of self-worth.”

The man lowers his gun. Holsters it sly and simpering. Eames feels a scorch of anger at the gesture.

As if it says,  _I don’t need this,_ which he resents, though it’s true. As if it says, _You’re already mine._

“Is she dead?” Eames asks quietly, still looking at Zumani, who cocks his head as if surprised by the question.

He frowns, looking troubled.

“This is why I wanted Sinclair,” he says regretfully.

Eames opens his mouth to spit the vitriol that fills him, fountain rush of futility.

It never comes.

The blow to the back of his head is blinding.

In a spark of white heat, he hits the concrete steps in a sprawl, and everything vanishes in a curl of sharp, billowing pain.

.

.

Eames is mad at him.

It’s distracting and unhelpful.

At first, Arthur tried ignoring his texts. When that didn't work, he sent a handful of snippy replies, however nothing seemed to provoke Eames into real action.

Now, it seems Arthur has pushed too far, because Eames isn’t picking up his goddamn phone.

Arthur wants to be annoyed at the other man’s pettiness. Wants to feel justifiably agitated, wants to feel wrathful at his triviality. The truth is, Arthur started it. Started it with a big fat lie and now he has to live with the consequences.

Yesterday had been hard. After their difficult first meeting the night before, Arthur and Ezra had spent the day prepping like they were about to perform acute surgery. Which, he supposes, they were.

It was discomfiting, having Ezra look to him for answers like that. The very antithesis of their previous relationship.

Arthur knows that Ezra felt the strain of it, too. That he hated being the one out of the loop. Had taken one look at Arthur’s PASIV, long updated since their army days and blanched at the realisation of just how far behind he now was in this world.

It’s the next morning, now.

Arthur had been awake half the night, determinedly not thinking about Eames and instead running over the plan for their first foray into Ezra’s subconscious.

Arthur’s never claimed to be a prolific Architect. He knows his way around a blueprint well enough, though. Understands reality ratios and dream logic well enough to create a competent dreamscape.

He orders room service a little after six AM and is picking his way through a colourful fruit salad with yoghurt, when with lurking, disgraceful frustration, he considers calling Olly Bates.

It would be a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Olly’s a master at memory folds; layering realities like tracing paper into something believable. It makes sense to ask him for advice.

And if while they’re on the phone Arthur casually drops a line about how Eames is holding up -

Eames would kill him.

Arthur drops the idea, frying pan fast. Gulps the last of his coffee before it goes cold instead with burning cheeks.

He thinks about Ezra. About that blank spot in his brain surrounding Cairo, which just so happens to be when Arthur met him.

Ezra may have ostensibly forgotten it, but Arthur certainly hasn’t. Gleaming like a freshly minted coin, _Lieutenant Benjamin Hewitt._ Rapid temper and expert marksman. The bloodhound in camouflage.

He’d been so ready.

Or, well. He’d thought he’d been.

On the pillow beside him where he sits up in bed, his phone lights up with another text from Cobb.

And that's yet another thing. Cobb.

Quite out of the blue, Cobb had sent a text the day before, asking Arthur to call him.

This time, the tone is more urgent.

Arthur frowns. It’s not even five in the morning over there yet.

What’s Cobb doing awake at this hour?

Arthur knows he shouldn’t. He’s juggling too many worries as it is to add Cobb to his plate, too.

Another text, one word.

_Please._

It flashes snakebite through Arthur’s veins.

Cobb picks up before the call can ring more than twice.

 _“Arthur,”_ he says, voice of relief.

“Cobb,” Arthur replies, testy and firm. “What’s going on?”

_"Arthur, thanks. Thanks for, uh -"_

There’s a crackle down the phone that might be a shaky breath. Arthur has a sudden, horrible worry bubbling in his chest.

“Are the kids alright?”

 _“What? God, yes. Yes. They’re fine,”_ Cobb splutters. _“Yeah, no. They’re great.”_

He says it a little too enthusiastically to be entirely true. Still, it’s nothing more than the worrying strain of parenthood, the voice that speaks of one's perpetual fear that they are doing everything possible to screw up their children’s lives.

If something’s wrong with the Phillipa or James, it’s nothing worse than scraped knees and not eating their vegetables, which quite frankly sound like wonderful worries to be dealing with right about now.

For the first time in years, Arthur wonders if maybe he should consider swapping lives with Dominick Cobb.

“Then what is it?” he asks none too patiently.

Cobb clears his throat.

_“Saito called. Someone’s asking about the inception. He thinks they might come sniffing around soon.”_

It’s unexpected. A blindsiding comet that Arthur really, _really_ does not have the capacity for.

A menacing, murky thought erupts in his hindbrain. Lingers like smoke in a windless air.

 _You think he incepted you?_ Arthur had scoffed at Ezra, and Ezra. He’d looked not too far off saying _Yes._

Arthur knows better than to believe in coincidences anymore.

“Who’s he spoken to?” Arthur asks, mind whirring machines. He should call Eames.

Eames who, _fucking shit,_ isn’t answering his phone.

Ariadne, then, maybe.

Cobb whistles through his teeth.

_“A woman. Stacey Farris. Pretty sure I know the name but I got no clue. She’s an Extractor.”_

Air steals itself from Arthur’s lungs. He feels the blood drain out of him, into his belly like a wound. He must make some kind of noise because Cobb leaps on it.

_“Arthur? Do you know her?”_

Arthur knows her. That name is tattooed into his head like a childhood punishment.

His words wobble over his tongue before falling out of his too wet mouth.

“Have you told anyone else?”

Cobb makes a frustrated sound.

_“I left Yusuf and Ariadne voicemails. Neither have responded yet. I don’t think I’ve ever had a number for Eames.”_

He leaves the presumption hanging in the air, just like he’s always done.

They’ve never talked about why exactly Arthur has always known how to find Eames. The closest they came to it was that night in Mexico City, when Mother Tequila pressed her soothing hands to their foreheads, and the ice cut night bit through their shields.

Now, just like always, Arthur replies knowingly and without context,

“Eames is in Minsk on a job.”

Arthur’s not entirely sure why he’s never told Cobb that not only is he very aware of where Eames is, but that he’s been shacked up with him in the south of France for the last three years. It’s just never felt like the time.

Now probably isn’t the time, either.

_“Arthur, look. Whoever she is, Stacey Farris is missing. Saito thinks whoever wants to know about the inception has taken her. Thinks she was involved.”_

Arthur closes his eyes, hastily shoving the tray off his lap and scrambling out of bed. Phone pressed to his ear, he starts changing into a pair of dark jeans.

“Cobb, I have to go. If I don’t call back in an hour, just.”

He pauses and Cobb must hear it, the murmur of his regret.

 _“Assume the worst?”_ he asks.

He’s not sounded that young in a long time.

Arthur swallows dryly, his tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth.

“Yeah,” he replies thickly.

Then he ends the call.

Arthur dresses quickly, stuffing his things into his case and taking his phone, wallet, passport and gun with him.

The bag he leaves in the middle of the bed, next to the abandoned breakfast tray.

Either he’ll be back for it, or he won’t.

Hood of his raincoat half pulled up to conceal his face, he makes his way out of the hotel and into the street. Heads for Ezra’s hotel, three blocks away.

Pulling out his phone, he pulls up the text thread from Eames, eyes that last text sent seconds after his own.

_Poor effort, darling_

It shouldn't sting so sharply.

Pushing any other feelings of belligerent guilt aside, Arthur sends a new text.

_Olivier missing. Call now._

Then he slips his phone into his pocket, buckles down against the wind and marches towards his former Captain.

Steel in his mouth that tastes of cowardice.

.

.

Ariadne still hasn’t called Arthur. Still hasn’t called Cobb, either.

It’s mid-afternoon. A sunny Monday, t-shirts and ice cream. She’s sitting on the grass of a park bank, staring at a crime thriller she’s been pretending to read for the past hour.

Beside her, pressed up against the tree she’s leaning on is Sinclair, who is reading his own crime thriller. Or maybe he’s pretending, too.

She makes another quiet, huffing sound.

“What is it?” Sinclair asks without looking up from his book.

Ariadne can hear his grin.

“I can’t concentrate,” she says, flipping the book shut with a slap and dropping it between her bent legs onto the grass.

“You could try calling someone,” Sinclair says with absolutely zero subtlety, turning a page of his book and sinking a bit against the tree roots he’s cradled in.

Ariadne tosses him a sour glower.

“How’s your chest?” she asks pointedly.

“Healing nicely, thank you for asking,” he replies, sounding amused. “I don’t know what’s got you in such a tizzy, but you should just get it over with. Call Cobb. Call Arthur. Christ, call Eames if you’re so against calling the others.”

Ariadne stares at him, feeling full and antsy.

A creeping sensation washes over her, spider web thin. Sinclair doesn’t seem to notice. He continues,

“Do you even have their numbers? I’m honestly surprised they ever get work; they’re so hard to get hold of. I mean, I always thought _I_ was paranoid –”

“I never told you Eames was part of the team," Ariadne interrupts.

Her nerve endings feel raw, stretched. She half-expects Sinclair to turn to her, wild grin guilty, or full of terrible triumph.

Only, he doesn’t. Her heart thuds in her chest hammer hard and Sinclair, he just laughs, relaxed limbs, throat, smile.

“Oh please,” he snorts. “Wherever Arthur is, Eames is rarely far behind.”

Ariadne cocks her head at that, dented frown.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Sinclair gives her a doting, fond look. As if she’s ever so precious. Then he shrugs, all nonchalance and humour, returning to his book.

“They’ve been fucking for as long as I’ve known them.”

It’s Ariadne’s turn to laugh, then. Loud in the bumblebee bright air. A little hysterical, a little judging.

“No way. I mean, they _should._ God knows they’d be happier if they just screwed away their issues. They’re not fucking, though.”

That look again. Patronising affection.

“If you say so,” Sinclair replies, sing-song-sorry with an excessive amount of condescension.

Ariadne feels hot frustration inside her.

Sinclair’s _never_ worked with Arthur as far as she’s aware, why would he? No job needs two Point Men. And he’s barely ever worked with Eames by his own admission. What grounds does he have to speak about them with such knowledge?

She thinks about her first job. That glass shatter secrecy in the warehouse in Paris, as the light hummed and the rest of the team were under on a third level run.

Arthur whispering to her, so schoolboy soft.

There had been want there. More than a lusty energy like she’d originally thought it to be.

Ariadne’s not sure she’ll ever forget the look on Arthur’s face when he told her to stop asking. Begged, really, or close to it.

She certainly hopes she never has cause to look at anybody the way he looked at Eames’ unconscious face in that moment, as if any moment he might forget it entirely.

Her eyes find Sinclair again. His long featured profile, the glitch of his smile. He has a thin white scar, hook shaped around the bony edge of his jaw. His eyes are trained on the page of his book; they aren’t moving, though.

“You could take a photo,” he says, smirking.

Her anxiety, skittered away easy as leaves in the breeze.

“Maybe I will,” Ariadne teases, although it’s barely a joke.

Sinclair turns to her, lopsided, lovely. Kisses her mouth, quick and dry and warm. Flutter like the leaves above their heads.

“Why don’t –”

He’s interrupted by a loud, jangling sound. Her phone in her coat pocket, spread out to the sleeves beneath them.

They jump, laughing foolishly and she picks it up.

Blocked number.

They share a glance. Sinclair raises his eyebrows, as if to ask, _Well?_

She answers, an intake of breath.

“Yes?”

 _“Ariadne,”_ Arthur’s voice says, curt and collared. All work and no play. _“I’m afraid I have a situation. How soon can you get to Oregon?”_

.

.


	5. THREE

.

.

Coming to, ebb and flow of muddy water. 

Eames opens his eyes and he shuts them.

Opens them again to stare across the pit of the dark room, stares at the raccoon bruises peeking out from beneath mint green tips.

Olly opens his mouth, but the words don’t come. Eames huffs a tiny, hurting laugh.

Somewhere behind him, a light turns on.

.

.

Ezra’s awake when Arthur gets to his hotel room. It takes nothing to get in. 

It’s early, cleaning staff and harried welcomers, the jigsaw slotting pieces of the day to come. Master keys are worringly easy to get hold of before breakfast hours are over.

Room 212, a sad little single with beige walls and beige furnishings and slightly less beige curtains.

Arthur lets himself in, cautious and determined. Treading lightly and holding his breath.

Ezra’s in the shower.

Arthur takes a seat at the desk, cramped with a TV, kettle, tray of coffee sachets and a series of generic hotel mags.

Pulling out his handgun, Arthur rests it on the nearest magazine, his hand curled over it with possessive readiness.

After only a few minutes, the shower shutters off. Arthur holds himself stiffly, forceful and relaxed, soft as marble. He can hear the telltale labour of Ezra drying himself off, the hum of his voice.

The bathroom door swings open and Ezra flinches so violently, loud exclaim, wordless and his hand so tight on the door handle.

He stares ghostly at Arthur. At the gun under his hand.  He’s got a towel around his bare, slightly damp hips, revealing the speckled slash marks of scarring over his chest. Pinkish flecks like paint embedded.

Ezra makes an uncomfortable, squirming motion to over himself up further. 

It’s not the first time Ezra’s looked at him like this. Goddamn covert shyness like shame.

Arthur refrains from rolling his eyes. He doesn’t have the words to express quite how sexually uninterested he is in David Ezra, how uninterested he has always been.

Arthur smirks instead, just enough to let Ezra know he’s aware of Ezra’s baseless concerns. The older man flushes an ugly puce shade of embarrassment. 

Hunched stalemate in the doorway, Ezra asks quietly,

“What can I do for you, Arthur?”

Arthur gestures for Ezra to take a seat at the foot of the bed, half a kick away from him. He can see the war in Ezra’s cool green eyes, the instinct to refuse.

Arthur isn’t giving an inch, though and it must show in his face because slowly, in jerky movements, Ezra sits on the end of his single hotel bed. Hands cupped in his lap, like he’s cuffed already.

“Why did you call me here?” Arthur asks before Ezra’s fully taken his seat.

Confused eyes, rabid rabbit.

“To help me.”

Arthur doesn’t mean to cock the gun but his hands are miles ahead of him. They pull back the slider, a hard metal  _ clack. _

Ezra winces, shifting and wriggling, jitter of hands like they could catch the bullet.

“Arthur -  _ Hewitt - _ I swear, I swear I called you because I think someone has been inside my head. And maybe I’m an idiot, but I trust you. More than any of the others.”

Shy fright, a mockery of a friendly smile.

“You always were the best,” he says, like he honestly thinks flattery will get him anywhere.

Arthur leans forward, elbows on knees, gun hanging in loose fingers between his legs.

Ezra leans back, bare scarred chest heaving.

“Arthur, what’s going -”

“Stacey Farris.”

Genuine bewilderment seems to douse itself over Ezra, twist of trouble.

“Wh-who?” he stammers, voice shaking.

“Why am I here?” Arthur asks.

“Arthur, what’s going on?” Ezra demands, almost angry now.

They stare each other down and in the void between them, a mutual gasp for air. Mouthfuls of sand.

Then, small and effortful, there is a clicking knock inside the door of Ezra’s hotel room. 

Someone is about to enter.

Arthur’s on his feet in an instant and Ezra follows, looks torn in stasis, caught off-guard, but Arthur’s in the unlit bathroom before he can do more than look to the door.

Arthur breathes quietly through his nose, gun clenched uncocked, too tight, in his hands. His eyes are on Ezra’s still, solid profile.

He hears the door open, sees Ezra’s horrified expression, the very real surprise that lingers there.

“Who -”

“Captain,” the intruder says, thin and reedy. An accent somewhere between Brooklyn and Amsterdam.

“I’m not -” Ezra starts, gulps. Finger coil fists.

The soldier never leaves, not really. They are fighters in their bones, all of them.

The intruder makes a tutting sound, stepping just out of Arthur’s line of vision. By the laser focus of Ezra’s eyes, the newcomer is alone. It’s all the arrogance Arthur requires of him.

Ezra takes a deliberate, encouraging step backwards, pulling the man further in. He isn’t looking around, back of blond hair, so he must not have seen Arthur sneak in. Must have only just arrived himself.

“Captain,” he says again, predator proud. “We need to have a little chat.”

It’s a whim, one of his sloppier ones, but it works.

The man is unprepared for Arthur, doesn’t get more than half a turn when he steps forward before the handle of Arthur’s gun smacks well angled and forceful into his temple.

He drops, ragdoll bones, and Ezra lets out a savage breath.

“Fuck. Do you think -”

“Yes,” Arthur replies. “Get him in the bed before he wakes up. Hurry.”

Ezra gives him a bleak look, then takes the man’s legs.

They make quick work of his shoes and jacket - empty, of course, because anything more would have been too  _ helpful. _ They tuck the covers over him, so the dark blood from his head leaks down into the navy cushions.

At Ezra’s questioning glance, Arthur takes a pillow, straddles the unconscious stranger with arms trapped between his knees, and presses it directly over his face, leaning down hard.

“What are you -” Ezra hisses. 

Arthur doesn’t reply. Doesn’t look anywhere but at the empty wall above the headboard. Doesn't look even as slow, heavy, distraught, the man’s body begins to buck and bend beneath him.

Arthur doesn’t keep score of the lives he steals from other men. 

He blocks out Ezra’s demanding voice, feels the rushing of his own heart and waits it out the way he always does. Teeth clenched, face scrunched in concentration.

Bile chokes him. He swallows it down, heaving, when after a full minute of stillness, he swings his leg back over the man and stands upright. He pushes the limp body onto its side, sleep sprawl lax.

Ezra, behind him.

“What the hell were you thinking? We could have questioned -”

“No, we couldn’t,” Arthur snaps. His hands are shaking with brittle rage. Looks like he’ll have to be faster than he'd hoped about getting back for his luggage, then. “Get dressed.”

Ezra’s buttoning his shirt while Arthur wipes down the room and asks,

“United States. Name a city you’ve never been.”

It’s not the first time they’ve played this dash-dare game. Ezra falls into it like a marching band.

“Phoenix,” he says without stopping to think.

“Another one.”

“Charlottesville.”

“Another.”

“Dallas.”

“Another.”

“Portland.”

“OK,” Arthur says, handing Ezra his case. “Leave through the back. Use this -” he slaps a credit card into his hand, black, unused, “- to take out five hundred bucks and to buy a secondhand car. Then destroy it. Get yourself to Oregon by this time next week. No, Oregon. We're not going to fucking Maine. Can you get a new name?”

Ezra shakes his head, green gill grimace and snarly, still looking at the corpse in his warm bed.

“David,” Arthur almost shouts, snapping his fingers in the man’s face. “He won’t be alone for long. We have three hours if we’re lucky. I will get you a new identity before you reach Portland, OK?”

Ezra nods. Licks his lips.

“Hewitt, I -”

“It’s  _ Arthur,”  _ Arthur grunts. “And you’re welcome. Go. Now.”

The soldier never leaves, not really.

Ezra departs as told, and the only real surprise is that he didn’t salute before doing so.

Arthur takes a deep, aching breath. He looks at the dead man, pocketless, anonymous. Looks at his phone. Eames still hasn’t called.

He types in a new number, thumb sticky on the screen.

She picks up after four agonising rings.

_ “Yes?” _

“Ariadne,” Arthur says, still staring at the back of that blond, bloody head.  “I’m afraid I have a situation. How soon can you get to Oregon?”

There’s a charged pause, which Arthur has no time for.

“Ariadne, it’s about -”

_ “I got Cobb’s message,”  _ she says, quick, apologetic.  _ “I was going to call you.” _

This isn’t surprising. Arthur grins a little, despite himself.

“I’m sure you were,” he says. “Look, this might be connected. How soon can you get to Oregon?”

Another pause, as if, Arthur thinks uncertainly, she’s looking to someone else for an answer.

“Ariadne, is someone else with you right now?”

She doesn’t answer straight away.

Arthur, furious flash. He has done nothing whatsoever to earn Ariadne’s distrust. He has done better by her than almost everyone else in this business, and he’ll be damned is he is afforded anything less than her absolute loyalty.

“Don’t you dare lie to me,” he growls.

Nothing loosens lips like a challenge for obedience.

_ “I’m with Sinclair,”  _ she says.

Brown hair, blue eyes. Tail end of his thirties and an elderly mother in Dublin. A little brother in rehab on his third stint.

It’s been a while since they’ve crossed paths.

There’s a mumbling scuffle, chitter bird voices, then,

_ “Arthur, what’s going on?” _

“There’s no time,” he says. “Look, I need you in Portland Oregon by next Monday. Not sooner, You alone, Ariadne. Do you understand me? Are you in Paris?”

_ “Yes, I am,”  _ Ariadne replies, trepidation and taciturn vowels.

“Pack a bag, get the TGV to Lyon. Fly to another non-capital, then get to the States. Your best bet is to drive. Use your Burridge passport, it’ll be less conspicuous.”

Ariadne makes a humming sound of agreement. Muffled, he can hear a man’s voice, talking to her.

“He is not coming,” Arthur says.

_ “He could help,”  _ Ariadne says in that stubborn tone that is usually so very brilliant. Not now, not here.

“Or he could die,” Arthur snarls harshly, and even he’s not entirely sure whether or not he means that as a threat, so hell knows how Ariadne will take it.

More scuffling.

Arthur, his eyes on the back of that dead blond head. He can smell the blood.

Then another voice on the end of the phone.

_ “Arthur, it’s Sinclair,” _ the man says obtusely.  _ “I’ll make sure she gets out of France safely. And I can keep my ears open over here.” _

Arthur breathes heavily through his nose.

Gritting his teeth, he mutters an extraordinarily reluctant,

“Thank you.”

Sinclair, by some miracle, doesn’t comment on how utterly thankless Arthur knows he sounds.

_ “Do you need me to do anything else?” _

“No,” Arthur replies hastily, only then -

Eames isn’t picking up his phone.

Robert Sinclair is not very high on Arthur’s list of trustworthy contacts. In a fix for Points, he’d call Belfry or Selma long before he’d call Sinclair.

Still, for whatever reason it seems like Ariadne has decided she can trust him, and Ariadne is a lot of things but even when she was a novice, she was never naive.

He thinks about Ezra, driving alone to Oregon after a decade long interval of civilian life. About Cobb up to his ears in childcare, getting harrying calls from Saito about a job he walked away clean from; about the blond man with no name and the look on Ezra’s children’s faces in that photograph and Eames, paltry values bastard,  _ not picking up his phone. _

“Eames is on a job in Minsk,” he says. “Find a way to extract him, will you?”

Sinclair makes an odd, croaking sound. A gulped gasp.

“What?”

_ “Zumani’s job?”  _

There is no such thing as coincidences. Not in Arthur’s rule book, not in any rule book.

“How do you know that?”

_ “I was supposed to take Point. Got the shit kicked out of me in Bulgaria and dropped out at the last minute.” _

Arthur lets that one sink in. Sink anchor slick through the rest of the utterly dire non-coincidences he has found himself bombarded with in the last forty-eight hours.

He clears his throat.

“Who took over?”

_ “Selma Theodore. Olly Bates is the Architect and I think Zumani is mixing chems himself.” _

Ariadne says something indistinct. Then, loud in his ear, her voice again.

_ “Arthur, we’ll be fine. I’m more than capable of getting to Oregon, thank you. Wherever you are just, be safe, won’t you?” _

Mind reeling, Arthur thinks he makes an affirmative sound before ending the call, but perhaps not.

The quiet hum of the hotel room blisters in his ears. With one last glance around the room, Arthur slips silently out into the corridor, the Do Not Disturb sign swinging on the outside handle.

Past the cleaning staff and the breakfast service, past security and the reception and a couple arguing loudly in the foyer.

It’s not yet eight in the morning.

Somewhere in the city, a check-in won’t be answered and maybe the hounds will be unleashed.

He heads for his hotel, mapping the quickest route the bus station. Phone in his hand like the keys to Heaven's gates.

Eames. He still hasn’t called.

.

.

Across the Atlantic a short while after, Ariadne’s throwing the last of her things into a wheeled case when she realises something that makes her laugh.

Sinclair looks up at her from his laptop, where he’s securing flights out of Lyon. Hers to Munich, his own to Warsaw.

“What is it?” he asks.

She grins, sheepishly bemused.

“He told me to use my Burridge passport,” she says, waving the little booklet in question. “I’ve never - Eames made this. After our second job together. He didn’t even charge me for it.”

Sinclair smirks, breath of amusement as he returns to his laptop.

“I told you they were screwing,” he mutters under his breath.

“Well, then I have no idea why Arthur’s not been in a better mood for the four years I’ve known him.”

She shrugs, playful and weirdly delighted. Almost laughter, almost tears. 

It doesn’t dislodge the stones in her stomach. The unsettled sensation that everything is about to get much, much worse than it already is.

Sinclair’s eyes, soft as ocean tides. They find her, just like always.

.

.

His hotel room is untouched when he gets back, although he has no confidence it will stay that way for long.

Checking out early will be less suspicious than abandoning post, so Arthur dutifully queues up at the reception behind an anxious backpacker, a disgustingly excitable family of four and a smartly dressed woman. He finds himself staring at the back of her head, bronze brown hair thick with curls tucked in a jewelled butterfly pin.

He's eager to be gone from this place, this city, this state. He doesn't want to pause, to rest, to  _think_ because he's concerned that if he stops, stops even for a moment, he might not find it in himself to start again. Every piece of him yearns for three days ago. For opening his eyes to his pillow under his head and the solid weight of kisses tracing his spine.

Around the strap of his bag and the handle of the silver briefcase containing the PASIV, Arthur can feel the last of his adrenaline leaking out of his hands in thin tremors.

He's mostly confident in Ezra's ability to get himself out of Milwaukee in one piece and he's not at all worried about Ariadne getting out of France. He's even not entirely doubtful of Sinclair being able to get discreetly into Minsk.

What he's less certain of, what he's not used to feeling so uncertain of, is Eames.

Eames has always marketed himself as unreliable. He's unabashed in his lack of loyalty to the vast majority of his colleagues and he's made a good living as a mercurial madman of questionable scruples.

Arthur's never doubted him, though. Even when they were at odds, even after he ignored Eames so long he didn't even realise he'd been drop-kicked into Limbo until three days later, he'd never been uncertain of _Eames._

Idly waiting, eyes on the back of the woman's head, he calls again.

This time, it doesn't even ring.

A cold, hollow dread creeps gooseflesh over Arthur.

Eames could have turned his phone off. It would be a dick move, one Eames is more than capable of any day of the week and twice on Sundays.

Now, it feels more like bad news, that _blip blip_ call fail. It feels more like a sorry, a sour confirmation of something Arthur isn't ready to conceive of.

He's going to have to drop communications if he wants to get out of the US alive. He's going to have to become untraceable and untraceable, it also means _unreachable_ and Arthur knows more than anything, he doesn't want to be unreachable.

He doesn't want the last time he ever saw Eames to be a lie.

In front of him, the woman with the curly bronze hair turns, catching his stare.

She smiles a pleasant, toothy smile and there's a glint of interest in her eyes.

Arthur blinks a little stupidly and turns away, causing her to blush and turn back.

With gritted teeth, before he can lose his nerve, he pulls the sim out of his phone and snaps it. Flinches at the crack of plastic like bone.

He pockets the pieces and steps closer to the desk as the woman moves to the receptionist.

In his head, he starts to tot up all the flights and documents he's going to burn through in the coming week and grimaces.

Being on the run is such a goddamn drain on the finances, he thinks sullenly, and tries hard not to think about Eames snickering in his ear over how much easier it would be if he didn't insist on being an actual tax paying citizen.

Tries hard not to think about Eames at all.

.

.

He has no idea how long he’s been sitting here. How long since they dragged a writhing Oliver Bates out by his legs, while he bellowed his futile vengeance.

He thinks it's only been a few hours, it's hard to tell. Blood in his teeth, welling beneath his skin in great splatters of inky purple.

Scrape splinter ribs. His knee’s gone again.

Eames shivers as light streams through the open door. Spills in streaks of sickly yellow around a slender figure in the doorway.

"Jesus God,” the man says.

Eames laughs.

Red, wet laughter, like a ritual in the dark. Light on the knife.

“Oh fuck this,” he mutters, bread and butter thick. “Fuck right off.”

The man laughs, too.

.

.


	6. Interlude: Eames

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey lovelies,
> 
> Just a quick warning for some flippant and dismissive references to mental health issues (specifically panic attacks), bad language and severe miscommunication.
> 
> I'll probably keep adding these sort of interludes, where we focus on one character for an extended time. They'll be scattered around, probably mostly Eames and Arthur centric.
> 
> One day, I'll write something fluffy. If I can figure out how.
> 
> Thanks for all reviews, it's lovely to hear from you!
> 
> Your  
> LRCx

.

.

The day ends with Eames sitting on the floor, bones screaming in swollen protest, crying like a motherfucking child.

It’s the third time he’s ever experienced what someone might call a panic attack, if Eames wasn’t above such things.

The first one, he had when he was thirteen years old, as he stood in front of his father for the first time in his life and was told, _your_ _name is Elijah, now._

The second, when he was twenty-one years old. Christmas Day, the end of the world.

And now, on a scorching day in August, with bruised ribs and a latent concussion, a knee brace holding his left leg together and the tattered corner of a stolen Mondrian in his hands.

Shittiest possible end of a day, really. Apparently, days last thirty-seven hours in Hell.

.

.

Eames’ day starts early evening, when a door opens and Hugo Schevner stands before him, horror etched like pencil marks into the O of his mouth as he says, _Jesus God,_ like he’s just found proof.

“Fuck right off,” Eames tells him, spitting blood down his chin.

Then Hugo Schevner asks,

“What are you doing here?”

Eames laughs. It hurts to, but he’s quite sure if he doesn’t, he might cry instead. Because Oliver was screaming and Selma is dead and here stands Hugo bloody Schevner, asking _What are you doing here?_ Like he’s found a stray cat in his basement.

“I paid you back,” Eames wheezes, tensing as Hugo brandishes a stubby pocket knife, only to slice through the rope holding his wrists in place.

“Yes, yes you did,” Hugo agrees candidly. “With interest.”

“So why are you buying my head from Zumani?” Eames asks, words snarled like bramble thorns in cotton. His muscles are twitching, contracting like little mousetraps under his skin.

Hugo shakes his head.

“I’m not,” he says. “Zumani said he had a prize for me. I am not a man to say no to presents. You know that, Sorrell.”

Eames slumps in the chair he’s been tied to for God knows how long.

“He killed someone,” he says darkly. “Possibly two someones. And you’re telling me, you didn’t even ask him to?”

“Sorrell, seriously,” Hugo sighs, rubbing his stubbly cheeks.

His hairline has receded further and he’s lost weight. He’s significantly less intimidating when not surrounded by burly bodyguards. He gives Eames a withering look as he says,

“You know I don’t get people to do my dirty work for me.”

Eames grunts at that. He knows all too well how much Hugo enjoys doing his own dirty work.

He rubs his chafed wrists, taking shallow breaths.

“Are you fencing me?” he asks.

Hugo shrugs, nonplussed, still a bit resentful.

“If I am, I wasn’t informed,” he says. “Look, Sorrell, I mean no offense, but I want you out of my city. Now. This is bad for business, you here like a stuck pig. Makes me look like I don’t keep my promises.

“Zumani hasn’t told me anything about any killings, just to collect my prize. Either he did not know I was no longer interested in chopping your cock off, or a larger game is being played here. I do not suffer fools and I do not like being used, so whatever the case may be, I want you gone.”

As he talks, he cuts the ropes around Eames’ ankles.

Then he dusts himself off with a look of distaste.

“I just don’t know if they’re really going to let me waltz into an airport like this, Hugo,” Eames says, wiping the blood from his mouth with the back of a shaky hand.

Hugo gives him an assessing look, then nods a jerky, displeased nod.

“Very well. I will have you patched up first. How’s that?”

He gives a tremendous sigh as he says it, most displeased about having to go to all this effort.

“Most kind of you,” Eames replies, still looking up at him from his seat.

Hugo’s wearing an expectant look, to which Eames grins a horrible, cheery grin.

“Oh no, Hugo. That doctor is coming _here._ I’d rather you just do me in right now than stand on this.”

Even as he gestures to his swollen knee, straining inside his tattered jeans, he hears that little Arthur voice in the back of his head reminding him why it’s a bad idea to tell a mobster he’d rather be executed than pretty much any other option.

Especially when said mobster is visibly packing and would largely benefit from simply having Eames disappear without a trace.

To his absolute surprise, Hugo mutters something under his breath, then calls loudly to someone standing outside the door.

A woman enters, steely eyed. She’s very tall and very thin, wearing a long black dress and apron.

They confer in what sounds like Ukrainian. She leaves with only one glance at Eames, eyes flicking over him, dart sharp.

“Stay there,” Hugo says before he follows her out.

Eames offers his retreating back a pithy look, waving his hands in the air.

“Where exactly would I go?” he mumbles.

He stares at the open door. The yellow light and the dirty floor and the scuff marks Olly Bates made as he was dragged out by his feet.

Eames frowns at them.

He never did find out what blasted name the twat got tattooed on him.

.

.

Later, Eames will get to Marseille. He will arrive in Marseille thirty-seven hours after Hugo Schevner found him in that basement.

He’ll be in a daze, a lazy haze. He won’t have slept properly in so long and he’ll be preparing for how Arthur’s going to rip him a new one when he gets in and he’ll think about how honestly can’t wait. How he wants nothing more than to lie on their bed covered in huge bags of ice while Arthur shouts at him for being so irresponsible.

He’ll think about how he’s never going to complain about Arthur’s lectures ever again.

.

.

The doctor is a wizened old woman with blunt fingernails, wiry grey hair and a growl of a mouth.

She berates Eames in terrible English and occasional spikes of Polish about taking better care of himself, which is simply very unfair. Eames accepts her criticisms, and nods in occasional agreement when she stabs one of his arm tattoos and tells him _Prison trash._

Which is unfair, too, even if yes, fine, he _did_ get that one in prison.

She rubs ointment on his injuries that stinks and stings and while checking the back of his head, she traces the brand stamped blister red between his shoulders.

“Thief,” she says and he doesn’t know if it’s a good guess or if she can read it.

Or perhaps he just carries that with him, a copper bright air of thievery and deceit.

She bandages his knee up surprisingly tightly for her old bones and shoves two pills into his open hand.

“Now,” she says and he swallows them dry, while that little Arthur voice tells him to say no to strange drugs, even as it is slowly being drowned out by the burning pain running up and down his limbs.

He gets up on unsteady feet, blinding twinge in his left leg before it settles.

“Thank you, dziȩkujȩ bardzo,” he says and she pats his cheeks incredibly gently.

“Hurry home,” she tells him.

Then she leaves, replaced promptly by the tall, thin woman, still looking like she’s walked out of a Brontë novel and is most unhappy about it.

“You are to leave now,” she says.

“Yes, yes,” he grumbles, limping slowly to the door as she walks behind him.

There’s a lift, tiny and smelling of grease.

He chuckles dryly, squashed sardine with his austere company, refraining from asking how they got him down there in the first place. He has a feeling the answer would be all too humiliating.

The lift rattles and whines as it rumbles up to ground level. Opens electric sticky to reveal the remnants of what might once have been a small shop. Shelves and racks, dusty cluttered, cut the space into badly shadowed rows.

Eames shuffles through them, head down and ears alert. He just needs to get to the door.

He just needs to get to the door.

Just the door. Just the door.

Just the door and then the street and then another and then maybe the station and the train.

And then?

The door opens when he is only a few shy metres away.

Eames looks up, instinct prickle, and sees two men in the doorway.

They step inside, dressed to conceal weapons, dressed to throw punches. They stare at Eames with the kind of bloodlust starvation that might better suit wolves.

“Please tell me they’re yours,” he says to the woman behind him, not really expecting an answer.

One of the men, slighter and meaner looking. A bruise on his cleft chin.

“Eames, right?” he says, swanky yank swagger. He’s a mercenary, probably, but his partner holds himself like a soldier. “Or is it Sorrell? Or Henry McCloud? Or perhaps it’s Rupert Hadley?”

He lists them with vigour, with relish. Smarmy as a teenager as he steps closer, almost a skip.

Eames shifts his full weight onto his good leg as he straightens up, cocking his head to the side and displaying as deep a boredom by the accusation as he can while his heart is racing and his mind is foggying with the slow release of the old woman’s drugs.

Behind him, footsteps too heavy to be the woman’s and he hopes to God they’re Hugo’s men and not more uninvited Americans.

“Bit late to the party, gents,” Eames says. “Although that’s your usual style, isn’t it?”

The Chatty Cathy sneers at him.

“No, I think we’re right on time.”

The first shot comes from behind.

Eames dives aside, grabs hold of the man that leaps for him and brings an elbow down violently onto the top of his spine. Loses step as his knee gives upon landing and they go down hard in a graceless, tangling sprawl.

Bullet bangs, ringing loud flashes and the woman shoots one of the Americans in the gut.

The men behind her must be Hugo’s, because one immediately moves to cover her while the other goes for Eames’ attacker.

Adrenaline fast, bellowing and barking, it’s over before it has any chance to start.

Bloody rolls and two racks of broken shelves shattered, the body of one of the Americans splayed across it, crucifixion wide.

The other is either also dead or unconscious. The woman is standing over him, one of her own men down. With the look of a displeased governess she aims her gun a few inches to the left of Eames’ head as she says,

“Go, now.”

Eames goes.

Thunder in his ears as he makes his way on drunk-steady feet down the empty, endless street, into the growing night.

.

.

Five thousand miles away, Arthur gets off a bus in Indianapolis.

.

.

The first wallet Eames ever stole was from a man who was rude to his mother.

A heavy, black leather square of pockets. Inside it, ten pretty twenty pound notes.

His mother had slapped him silly when he handed it to her. Afterwards, she’d laughed, kissed his nose and handed him one of the twenties back.

Eames has always been good at pickpocketing. He has an entire drawer full of watches at home thanks to his mild addiction to it.

It’s harder to pickpocket when he looks like he’s barely escaped a cage fight with a landrover.

Eames hasn’t seen himself, but he can tell by the tight, tender strain of the muscles in half of his face that he must look like braised meat.

People get antsy about standing too close to someone who looks one round away from knockout and while clean, the clothes given to him by one of Hugo’s lackeys are tattered, ill-fitting. There’s no going back to the hotel, though.

He has no choice but to hover around the crowded train station and wait for an opportunity to present itself.

Unsurprisingly, it happens close to where alcohol is being served.

Two men in suits, sitting at the station bar with jackets thrown casually over the backs of their stools.

One has the sense to fold his over itself, meaning it would take Eames up to four attempts to reach anything valuable if he doesn’t get it right.

His friend is less fortunate, his jacket neatly hung at the shoulders, pockets on full display. All it takes is a conveniently timed rush of customers, a common enough occurrence at this late hour now the clocks have pushed long past dinner hours, and he slides a fat wallet out of the inside pocket, along with a phone and a passport.

It doesn’t always happen right first time.

Often a wallet, particularly of a younger guy like this one, is all cards and no cash, which is useless to Eames right now.

Once it’s in his hands, he hobbles as quickly as he dares out to the main station and makes for the ticket desks.

He’s in luck. Stuffed behind a small cluster of business cards written in Russian is a fat wad of Belarusian rubles.

He buys a ticket for Mazyr, last one of the night, then he heads for two international payphones in cramped booths at the far end of the station.

Punches in the number with as much aggressive enthusiasm as he can muster, blinking very slowly. His mouth tastes of dry pills and he can feel the tug of stitches in his side.

It doesn’t ring.

Would it _kill_ Arthur to be contactable more than two hours out of every twenty-four?

This is why Eames wants a landline in the flat.

Arthur thinks it’s a preposterous idea, of course.

Sliding more coins into the slot, several of which take more than one attempt, Eames types in his second, significantly less appealing option.

It rings for almost a full minute before a rough voice answers,

_“Winsome Decorators.”_

Tongue thick in his mouth, Eames replies,

“Do you remodel, too?”

There’s a gruff sound. A pause. Then,

_“Who is this?”_

“It’s Eames.”

_“You sound weird.”_

“I think I’m on ketamine,” Eames replies. Tries to accentuate his consonants in case he’s slurring. It just makes Leon laugh.

_“Sure sounds like it. What do you need?”_

Sometimes, the fact Leon actively dislikes him is quite useful.

“I think Aldman is on the move again. Don’t hang up.”

Miraculously, Leon doesn’t. Eames continues before he can change his mind.

“I’m stuck in Belarus. I’ve got a train from Minsk to Mazyr in half an hour, but I’ve got nothing on me. I need to get to France. Do you have anyone that can help?”

 _“What makes you think Aldman’s up and running?”_ Leon asks suspiciously.

Eames leans heavily into the transparent side of the booth. Beneath the heavy blanket of woolly drugs, his body is thrumming with a far off pain that awaits him.

“Because about an hour ago, an American merc asked if my name was Rupert Hadley. And I think Zumani just tried to secretly fence me through Hugo Schevner.”

 _“I thought you paid Schevner back?”_ Leon grunts.

“I did!” Eames growls, heavy breath ballooning in his lungs. “That is _not_ the point. You’re the one that’s worried about Olivier not answering her phone. Odds are Aldman’s got her.

“Look, I’m fucked. I need a passport, money, painkillers and a military grade knee brace, pronto. I will owe you. Leon, you know I’m good for it.”

Leon mutters a few unkind things that Eames blatantly ignores. Sweat is starting to drip down his back as he holds himself off his left leg.

Even now, he keeps thinking about his phone back in the hotel room. Crackable, still containing that last text thread from Arthur.

It would take nothing to trace it back to Marseille. To find their safe haven, to find _Arthur,_ if they haven’t already.

Eames has fucked up. He’s fucked up royally and he has no idea how to get hold of him without shining a large, fluorescent beacon over everything.

If Aldman _is_ active, there’s probably only one person he would want to get his hands on more than anyone else, and that’s Arthur.

Arthur. Capable, adaptable, dependable Arthur. Who Eames loves, loves deeply, and to whom Eames’ last words were a pitiful jibe sent over _text._

On the other end of the line, Leon hums a sound of pure reluctance. Eames closes his eyes, his forehead resting against the cold metal of the payphone.

_“Don’t get your train to Mazyr. Go to Brest. I can pull a favour, have someone past the border in twelve hours max with everything you need. Don’t get a train, shithead. Jammy a car.”_

Eames squeezes the phone hard, butting his head against it as he slots another coin into the phone.

“I can’t drive on this fucking knee, Leon.”

 _“Oh well,”_ Leon sneers dramatically. God, Eames hates him. _“In that case, trap yourself in a tin can for five hours with a bunch of strangers. See how I care. It’s your funeral, you suicidal cunt.”_

Then he hangs up.

Eames slams the phone back down, misses the hook and curses, ramming it into place with a snarl.

His lungs are throbbing in his chest, toxic waste and hatred. He turns slightly to lean against the phone, staring sideways out at the people milling about the station. His blinks are long, weighted. Sleep bubbles through his thoughts in clouds.

He checks his freshly acquired wallet. There’s probably enough for another ticket.

Eames is mustering the courage to start walking back to the ticket desks, fingernails biting into his palms, when a scattering of newcomers from the most recent arrival start to fill the empty spaces, making their way towards the main exit. Eames stares at them, lingering on loud steps and bright scarves,

A kissing welcome for a young woman carrying four cumbersome bags, a cheer of beckoning for two identically dressed young men.

And a man slipping easily through the cracks in the crowd, as if not to be noticed, his eyes on the doors and a suitcase following, tugged close to his hurried heels.

Eames feels his stomach drop, slashed elevator cables, the bungee spring.

It’s Robert Sinclair.

Sinclair, who dropped out of the job without explanation. Who Selma Theodore replaced so effortlessly; the way she wasted that precious breath screaming Eames’ name in warning.

Sinclair, who Zumani _wanted_ for this.

Why? Because Sinclair would have played along nicely? _Is_ he playing nicely, is that what’s happening here?

Rage cuts clear as a knife through Eames’ lagging exhaustion. He wishes he was armed. He feels so exposed, with only clothes that don’t fit him and a wallet that isn’t his own. A passport without his face and a phone he can’t even use.

Sinclair’s too focused on getting out of the station to notice him, which is incredibly lucky because Eames is pretty sure he isn’t being subtle in the slightest.

He waits until Sinclair is out before making his way to the ticket desks.

It’s a new woman that serves him, which is just as well because he’s pretty sure his busted face is memorable enough without being seen twice.

There’s a train leaving at half three in the morning that will get him to Brest with time to spare. It costs him every last ruble in the wallet.

He’s not sure he can face the palava of stealing another one. As it is, he’ll need to stay clear of the station for the next few hours. It won’t do to hang around.

His eyes are barely open by the time he slides down a wall in a nearby alley behind the station, just out of reach of the street lamps. The man’s phone is useless to him for calls, but the battery’s well charged and he watches the minutes trickle by increasingly slowly.

He thinks about Robert Sinclair, and Selma’s grasping fingers. About Olly Bates’ frightened, guilty eyes as he looked up at Eames with the most reverant of all apologies.

He thinks about Arthur, and apricot danishes, and the way he looked away when Eames told him goodbye. As if he couldn’t bear to watch him leave.

.

.

Eames met Leon Hirst in his twenties.

A gruff, Lancashire lad with absolutely zero interest in playing nicely with anybody.

The first thing he ever said to Eames was, _Heard about your old man. My bad._

Eames had had no response to that, so Leon followed up with a recalcitrant,

_If you need anything, I’ll do what I can._

.

.

Eames rolls off the train into Brest wearing a thick jumper he shamelessly nicked from a careless backpacker, hood up high to hide most of the bruises in his face.

He’s slept for a few hours, cleaned himself off in the toilets and powered through the haze of the drugs to discover being dozy on pseudo-ketamine to the point of incapacity is about a trillion times more enjoyable than trying to walk on a dislocated knee.

Even with the doctor’s bandaging, the shooting pains with every movement have left him sweating and he probably deserves an award for only cursing twice as he hobbles to the nearest diner, freshly procured purse in hand courtesy of a distracted mother of three, to buy a fuck tonne of food he’s positive his stomach won’t be able to handle.

He’ll have to get Arthur to fetch him a medal. If Arthur’s not dead already.

_Fuck._

No, not even considering it.

He’s not entirely sure how Leon’s contact is going to look for him, so his best bet is to stay put for now. Sitting duck he might be, the little diner has a decent view of the street and very few patrons. If Eames is being followed, he won’t have a better vantage to figure it out from than this.

The waitress is young and very apprehensive about getting too close to the hooded stranger who looks more like he’s mid-heroin withdrawal than anything else.

She slides his plate of sausage and eggs over the table from the other side, followed by his coffee. Eames doesn’t even attempt to thank her.

The air in the diner is sticky grease thick; a loud television playing the morning news.

Two men sitting hunched over newspapers near the counter; a construction worker with flecks of concrete on his boots ploughing through his food like a last supper.

After a little over half an hour, a woman enters, skirt ruffling as she walks. She orders a tea in broken Belarusian and takes a seat two tables away from Eames.

She drinks it slowly in regular sips, staring up at the television, riveted.

Eames watches it, too, not taking anything in beyond the static hum of sound.

He’s interrupted a short while later by a voice, speaking a language he absolutely does not speak. Hungarian, he thinks.

He looks up. The woman is abruptly standing next to his table. Her hair is dark, drawn into a bun and she looks antsy. She repeats her question, miming something at her mouth. Then says,

“Cigarette?”

There’s something in her manner, in her earnestness, that piques his attention.

Instead of his grumbling French, which he might otherwise have offered, he replies,

“Oh, um, no, sorry love,” with an exaggerated swell of Essex in his voice.

The woman’s expression creases with disappointment.

“You’re English?”

Eames nods, stiff neck and dry mouth.

“I’ve been there,” she tells him proudly, smoothing her skirt. “Cambridge, for the schools. And Canterbury. I liked it there.”

A wholesome, hot feeling washes over Eames, like walking into a well known kitchen. All the right sounds and smells.

Without another word, the woman turns away to the construction worker and they flirt in easy morning chatter as he hands her a cigarette. Then she leaves.

Eames blinks, and when he tentatively moves his foot, it knocks into something left under his table.

A bag, half empty, like a deflated football.

Eames swallows, keeping his eyes on the television.

He waits ten more minutes before reaching down to take the bag, mostly concealed by chair legs. Slings it over his shoulder and walks very slowly out of the door.

.

.

It takes almost an entire day to get to Marseille.

Leon, being the bastard he is, even managed to get him _prescriptions_ for the xanax and vicodin sitting pretty in his little gift bag.

Four planes, each one more tedious than the last. He buys a change of clothes in Budapest airport, including loose pants that slide easily over the brace for his knee.

The brace that Eames shall be erecting an altar of worship to, just as soon as he has a spare minute.

He gets to Marseille early morning. Taxis aplenty and coffee to go.

The sleep, fractured as it’s been, has done him a little good. He’s almost alert by the time he’s sliding into the back of a cab and directing the driver to an address two streets away from his real one.

It pays to be cautious, sure. However he’s not a masochist and he isn’t going to make life _too_ hard for himself.

He’s only taken one xanax so far. The vicodin, on the other hand, he’s been crunching through fast as tic tacs. There’s a pleasant fuzzy denial spread like butter over his thoughts. He can barely feel his toes, never mind his knees.

Arthur's going to be so mad at him and Eames is going to bask in his wrath, calm as a hot bath.

The rucksack is a comforting non-weight on his back, a soft-strapped blanket he can hold with both hands and lean into as he makes his way to the block of flats.

He’ll need to warn Madame Segal. They won’t be able to stay, not until they clear up whether Aldman’s really hunting them down. And if he _is,_ well. They’ll cross that bridge later, than burn it down once and for all from the other side.

The cloudy peaceful feeling he’s been basking in, however, is shattered when he gets to the door.

Taped to the wood at head height, in bold red type, is a sign listing construction works ensuing inside the building.

Eames hears it like a hummingbird’s heart. The flutter of his own panic.

Then he wrenches open the unlocked door, pushes it hard with a loud  _bang,_ and runs faster than his shredded kneecap will allow, all the way up to the top floor.

.

.

Eames met Madame Segal when he was twenty-five.

Actually, he met her when he was three, but he doesn’t remember that very well.

Madame Segal was a bedtime story his mother told him.

Born in the back of a bakery in Paris, they called her _Bébé Farine,_ the Flour Baby. The prime of her childhood was spent in Occupied France, her father one of the many thousand white crosses littering the fields of dead and her mother a spy for the Allies.

She adored Eames’ mother, adored every girl that flourished without a man’s ruling hand to guide them.

_And one day, Nicks, you’ll need someone to turn to, to take you under wing, and I won’t be there. Madame Segal will be, though._

Madame Segal, who was in fact not a Madame at all but very proudly a Mademoiselle.

Eames turned to her when he was twenty-five, and she gave him a home, and she told him,

_You will be safe here. And if you are not, I will leave you a sign, and I will find you when it is safe again._

.

.

The flat is in pieces.

Every book torn apart, every drawer tipped empty. The Mondrian he stole for a bet is destroyed, a genuine masterpiece strewn across the living room.

Eames stands in the open doorway, full to the brim with absolute terror.

“Arthur?” he whispers, like if he says it quietly enough, he won’t find his corpse behind the sofa.

Something is being bent up inside Eames. Something that is not be made to bend, something that will snap irreparably.

In the kitchen, every single plate and glass smashed. The fridge emptied in spiteful splatters and the freezer dripping wet, door wide open.

The bedroom, shredded ribbons of clothes and pillows. The mattress upturned and knifed apart.

He goes to the fireplace in the living room, the false back, unstable. The PASIV is gone.

Eames falls back onto the floor, breath heavy, heavy until it won’t come, until it won’t leave.

It’s _gone,_ Arthur’s _gone._ Everything’s fucking _gone_ and Eames, too fucking stupid to find a way to warn him.

Arthur would have found a way. Arthur wouldn’t have left Eames sitting pretty, unprotected.

Eames doesn’t think he’s _ever_ cried like this. Not at thirteen in front of his father or on Christmas Day when his soul was torn out of him.

Arthur’s gone and Aldman’s back and Eames let it happen, wasted time chewing vicodin in Belgrade when he should have been _warning Arthur._

God knows how long it lasts. The unleashing of a scream he didn't know he had in him.

Eames sits on the floor until his throat hurts worse than his knee, until he’s gripping the bruises in his cheeks and he can’t physically make another sound.

Then he looks at the fireplace again, the back pulled down and the space where the PASIV should be.

The broken key is gone.

Eames, shuddering lungs, scrapes a rough hand over his face and takes a closer look.

It’s definitely not there, and doubt prickles over him. There’s no reason for them to have taken the key. It’s junk, a twist of metal not worth a second glance.

It might have been a totem, in another life.

Arthur always takes it with him on a job. Tucks it in the line of his bag, a keepsake and a charm.

If Arthur took it, it’s because he left willingly. Perhaps he caught wind of the danger in time?

Hope blossoms in Eames where he sits, scatter boned on the floor. He looks around him, at the crushed remains of what has been home for so long, isn’t really home at all without the person he always wanted to share it with, not anymore.

Gathering his strength, he clambers shakily back to his feet, drying his face and licking his lips.

If Arthur escaped, if Arthur’s alive, he’ll have left a trail for Eames to follow. He can do that, he can hunt Arthur down.

He’s been doing it for years, after all.

.

.

Soon enough, Eames finds Arthur.

That's when everything really starts to fall apart.

.

.


	7. FOUR

.

.

Robert Sinclair arrives in Minsk close to midnight. The station is surprisingly busy, chatter echoing up and bouncing down from the ceiling.

He keeps his head down, focuses only on getting to the main doors. There’s a prickle ghosting the back of his neck, and he suppresses the urge to look around despite the cold, anxious feeling he’s being watched.

He’d made use of his time on the train trying to track Eames down remotely, but so far the only evidence he’s found of Zumani’s job is the man himself having been in contact with a local chemist for supplies.

Sinclair exits the station, bramble nervous. Stops at the end of the half empty taxi rank to gather his bearings.

Without a more substantial lead, all he has is the name of the hotel they were planning to stay in when Zumani first gave him the job.

Hell, they might not even have stayed there in the end. Selma could easily have booked them all a new suite out of habit.

It’s late, bitter cold and dark. The sky is starless.

There’s nothing for it but to try.

Sinclair slides into one of the taxis, awkward mumbling chatter with the driver, and they zip quietly through the streets. He stares out of the window, worrying absently about Ariadne, about whether she’s had a chance to check in yet.

They’d agreed on radio silence for at least three days, just to be sure. It’s left a pit in his stomach anyway, hollow hunger than won’t be sated by anything less than her absolutely safety.

The hotel is drab, quiet. Harsh lights in the reception as he enters.

A woman at the desk, her expression bored.

“Hello,” he says with a twee smile as he approaches, naturally softening his accent to something a bit more English. People don’t like the English here, he’s found, but he’s also found they forget them better, too.

The woman doesn’t smile back, but she does respond in a pleasantly professional manner, a confident, “Good evening, sir,” despite it being very close to morning by now.

“I, um, know it’s late,” Sinclair says, bumbling through the embarrassed _I only know English_ routine, “But I was hoping you had a room available?”

She clicks through several screens on her computer and replies,

“Yes, Room 127 is free. How long will you stay?”

If Zumani kept the booking, he’s set up in 316. Sinclair makes an apologetic sound.

“Have you got anything higher up?”

“No,” the woman replies without checking.

“Oh, well, OK,” he says with a disappointed sigh. “127 is perfect, then.”

She returns to her screen, lips pursed. Behind her is a wall of cubby holes marked for rooms. On the rows marked 3, every single room appears to be available.

He gives his details and books for three nights, offering inane explanations about a trip with a cousin and a delayed flight that the woman obviously doesn’t listen to.

Meanwhile, Sinclair takes in the lay of the land in two sweeping half-clock glances. Mostly, he takes in the lack of cameras, and the security guard standing suspiciously alertly near the entrance for what appears to be a pretty quiet night.

“Thank you very much,” he tells the woman, retreating towards the door to make his way up to the first floor via the stairs.

It’s cold in the stairwell, smells of damp layered bleach.

He climbs, suitcase light in hand, up past floor one, floor two, and is halfway to floor three when he senses trouble, not a moment before it finds him.

A large hand on a rail several flights above, skimming downwards and feet trampling quickly.

And a voice, loud like a phone call, hushed like a secret.

_“-control as far as the General’s concerned, I’ve done more than my part. If his boys can’t-”_

A swinging door and a smack.

Sinclair, frozen between steps, breath turned to crystals in his lungs.

Impending dread creeps over him and without really thinking about it, he darts up the last flight of stairs. Sweat prickles up the back of his neck and at the door to the third floor corridor, he stares through the grubby plexi-porthole.

It’s empty. A long, Kubrick corridor, uninviting and empty.

Hand slippery-grip on his suitcase, Sinclair nudges the door open and steps inside.

His throat is constricted, his brow furrowed. He walks past each door in turn, the eerie silence buzzing through him like volts of electricity.

When he reaches room 316, he stares hopefully at the number. Swallows once, twice, then reaches for the handle.

It opens, much to his surprise and yet, actually, not a surprise at all.

When he finds inside, however, is nothing short of terrible.

Standing in the doorway to room 316, he stares at the main room of the suite as his stomach convulses in shock.

Selma Theodore is lying crucifix in the middle of the floor, dead.

Bruising covers her throat like the shadows of six hands, more at her wrists and old blood has crusted at her mouth. Her eyes are closed, hair fanning halo around her head, skin sunken. She’s been dead at least a day already.

Somewhere high above him, where his thoughts are swirling like birds, he hears clear as his own voice in his throat, _That should be you, lying there._

Biting his lips together, he takes in the rest of the room, scattered but not exactly trashed. There don’t seem to be any other bodies.

Sinclair steps inside, closing the door behind himself with a tiny snick of sound. There are several doors leading to various rooms, but only one is closed all the way.

He knows, surely, what he’ll find in there. He skirts around Selma’s sprawled body, can’t bear to look at her face for a second longer.

There are no sounds to be heard through the closed door when he gets to it, but he still opens it as slowly as he can, preparing himself for that copper slash stench.

A voice exclaims, loud and raspy and coyote screech,

“Fuck, fuck, what are you fuck-”

Even under the grime and smears of blood, he recognises the young man almost instantly.

It’s Olly Bates.

Sinclair stares at him, horrified. Olly’s sitting in the corner of the room, both eyes nearly swollen closed with bruises. He’s got his hands out in front of him, knobbled and broken. Every single finger is bent out of shape.

“Oh my God,” Olly says when Sinclair finds he can’t. “Are you - oh my _God.”_

“Olly?” Sinclair asks, steps inside and the young man flinches away, tears leaking down his puffy face.

“You knew - you knew - why are - you knew -” he’s saying, hysterical, voice rising and Sinclair rushes to him, makes desperate shushing sounds.

“Olly, no, I didn’t - what the fuck happened? Where’s Eames? Where’s Zumani?”

A howl erupts out of Olly, then, a mourning keening sound.

“Olly, Jesus, I’m sorry but you’ve got to shut up. Shut up, ok?”

He notices, then, dropping to his knees in front of the boy, that his ankles are zip-tied, as are his knees.

“Hang on, just hang on,” he says.

“I didn’t mean to -” Olly rambles, breath rattling as harsh as his consonants. “I didn’t _want_ to - fuck, please, you’ve got to believe me. They’ve got Helen, they took Helen, I couldn’t - she doesn’t even _know_ I do this shit. Oh God, they were going to hurt her. They just said it was Eames, they didn’t say - oh _Jesus_ they killed Selma. They never said - they’ve got _Helen.”_

“Ssh, it’s ok, it’s ok,” Sinclair says.

There’s nothing in the bedroom worth using, but a quick sweep of the main suite again finds him a stanley knife amongst the blue prints half finished for the job, and he comes back, making short work of the zip ties.

Olly’s legs fall apart like mannequin limbs and he twitches them awkwardly, grimacing at the blood rush.

He’s still weeping like a toddler, doesn’t even move to get up as he stares at his trembling, mangled hands held out before him.

“Olly, listen to me,” Sinclair says, puts one hand on the back of the boy’s head, partly to hold him steady and partly to check him for injury. “I didn’t know about any of this, OK? I need you to tell me everything.”

Olly’s mouth works hard around wet gurgling sounds as he tries to calm down, blinks unsteadily through the glaze of his tears.

“Zumani g-got my girlfriend,” he says, shielding his shamed face. “He said he just needed - Eames. Said someone was going to pay for him.”

“Who?” Sinclair asks, heart thudding.

“Hugo Schevner,” Olly says, and the name flushes another shudder through Olly. He buries his face in his arms and cringes.

Sinclair lets out a puff of worried breath, trying to reclaim his calm, trying to think logically, trying to ignore Olly’s smashed up hands and the fact Selma’s rotting corpse is lying only a few metres away.

He’s sure with effort he could carry Olly, maybe even with his suitcase, but he probably won’t do it fast enough to get out quickly. Precious seconds trickle past and Sinclair realises he has no idea how to contact Arthur, to tell him.

Tell him what, his lover’s been sold to a trafficker?

“Where is Eames now?” he asks, his hand still threaded through Olly’s greasy hair, blond and green.

Olly pulls his mouth away from his forearm to reply,

“In Schevner’s basement. They didn’t need me anymore. I thought they were going to - to let me. But Zumani. I couldn’t. They’ve got _Helen._ I don’t know what to do. What they want with me.”

Sinclair doubts very much they want anything from Olly anymore, not now they have Eames. He also doubts very much this Helen Olly’s so worried about is still alive, but he daren’t voice that yet. He needs to calm the boy down, not wind him up more.

“OK. OK, Olly, listen to me. We need to get you out of here. Alright? I’m going to help you. Who knows you’re here?”

Olly blinks wetly, crystal shine peering over his arms. He licks his bruised lips and tucks his legs up a little, like he’s considering the possibility of getting up some time in the next century.

“Zumani. His friend. An American called Cujo.”

Sinclair raises his eyebrows questioningly. Olly shrugs, wincing.

“Well _I_ call him Cujo. He’s a rabid dog.”

Sinclair doesn’t need Olly’s twisting gesture to his mutilated hands to understand.

“How long have you been here by yourself?” he asks.

Olly has no idea.

Sinclair wipes the sweat from his brow and considers his options.

Firstly, he has to decide whether to take Olly with him, or leave him to his fate.

Secondly, he has to decide whether to try get Eames out of Schevner’s basement, or leave him to his fate.

Thirdly, he has to decide whether to try contact Arthur, or leave him to his fate.

Olly will be dead in a day without him, will probably squeal like a pig on him if he leaves him here. Sinclair wouldn’t exactly blame him.

Eames is a grown man who has made his choices, and by the looks of it those choices have gotten other people hurt and killed.

And Arthur, well. Arthur is one of Sinclair’s least favourite people in dreamshare, not least of all because he has the moral compass of a genocidal tyrant and all the compassion of a starving wolverine.

Then there’s Ariadne, who Sinclair rather thinks he might fall in love with soon, if he hasn’t already. Ariadne, who for some reason has been granted the gift of Arthur’s protection.

He thinks about the way Arthur said on the phone, _Eames is on a job in Minsk, find a way to extract him, will you?_

He thinks about the way Arthur’s voice stumbled over Eames’ name, probably without realising it. He thinks about the possibility Arthur isn’t just fucking Eames, but maybe really loves him.

Sinclair cherry picks his sentimentality, always has. He stares at Olly Bates’ swollen knuckles and he wonders if he really is capable of leaving anyone in Hugo Schevner’s grubby grasp.

He might really dislike Arthur, but Eames has never been anything but decent to him. Not nice, certainly not _good,_ but decent nonetheless.

Resolved, Sinclair scoops an arm around Olly and gets him up to his shaky feet.

“If you lean on me, can you walk?” he asks.

Olly nods, mouth pressed green gill closed.

It’s slow, agonisingly so. Sinclair shuffles them out to the main room and Olly gestures to something behind the table where his designs are.

Sinclair goes to it, reaches down and picks up a phone shattered to glass shards. He frowns questioningly.

“Eames’,” Olly puffs out, resolutely refusing to look at Selma’s body. “I smashed it before they could get it. Thought they might try to use it to find Arthur.”

Sinclair smiles, and it feels odd, seeing that wound up guilt. Feels a little more justified in his suspicions. He pockets the phone and returns to Olly’s wavering side.

For a moment he refuses to move, is staring back at the room they’d tied him up in, as if he’s thinking about going back inside instead.

Sinclair wraps his arm back around him.

“Helen’s dead, isn’t she,” Olly says without any real question to it.

Sinclair doesn’t reply, doesn’t want to give voice to that, but Olly’s busted up face scrunches like he’d shouted a confirmation. One loud gulping sob bubbles in his mouth before it goes away again, locked up tight inside his body.

They shuffle onwards to the door, to the empty corridor.

“Are you ready?” Sinclair whispers as they stare down to the door of the stairwell, which might as well be a mile long for how slowly they’re moving.

Olly nods, not trusting his words. Sinclair feels awfully naked without a weapon, not that it would do him much good, already lugging his suitcase and the shatter-boned Architect.

“Let’s go,” he says.

He thinks about Selma whom he never knew well and Helen whom he didn’t know at all. About Arthur on the backroads of America and Ariadne on her way to Oregon.

He thinks about Eames in a basement somewhere in this merciless city.

About his mother, the way she always said, _There’s two things worth doing for someone you love, Bobby. You can pray for them, or you can feed them._

He drops a quick prayer under his breath with every step, like maybe it will do some good.

.

.

Years ago, Arthur cut ties with dreamshare for good.

He bought himself a new name from a kind, reckless Red Cross volunteer and he severed every red string that tethered him to that wretched life of waking nightmares.

For over a year, he was untouchable. He was Joshua Sheridan, and he had never heard of Project Somnacin. It was easy, then, not to tune into that radio station. Not to sweep the internet for clues or call up old contacts demanding news.

But that was years ago.

This time around, Arthur barely makes it two days before he gives in to his shredded nerves and pilfers a phone on a bus through Atlanta.

Technology is dangerously disloyal, these days. Clever phones make for dumb people, and within half an hour of getting off the bus on the high street, Arthur’s wiped the phone clean and is dismantling its software while he waits in line at a coffee shop.

He needs a shower and a bed. He needs somewhere safe for his PASIV, needs a flight out of here. The coffee shop is busy, free wifi overloaded, and he’s drunk half of his vile soy latte by the time he gets into the right email account.

He sits with his back against a corner, a disgraceful black beanie tucked over his ears like a goddamn hipster. Thank goodness he doesn’t have the glasses to match, though he’d probably fit in even better.

There’s a check-in from Ariadne, and one from Ezra.

There’s also one from Eames.

Surrounded by chatty coffee drinkers, the glow of the lights toffee hot, Arthur feels his heart flip in his chest.

A tiny shivers ripples through his muscles and he opens the email, mouth desert rasping.

_SAFE. ZUMANI + ALDMAN? STAY OUT OF EUROPE. SINCLAIR COMPROMISED._

Something furls up fern shy inside Arthur. Something confusing, something devastating.

He tries to trace the email but either his skills on an impractical phone are too limited or Eames has gone totally dark, because the trail disappears like smoke.

That name, etched into him. Aldman. Like a curse word in his skull.

Several things occur to Arthur at once, sitting in that candy sweet air, the cluster sugar of frappuccinos and college campus class.

It occurs to Arthur that Eames knows he isn’t in Europe anymore.

It occurs to Arthur that Eames was, at some point, _not safe,_ if he felt the need to clarify he now is.

It occurs to Arthur that Eames must have seen, but not spoken to Sinclair, and assumed the worst of his appearance in Minsk.

It occurs to Arthur that Eames might have killed Sinclair and that if he did, Ariadne is never going to forgive either of them.

And something else occurs to Arthur, then, too.

Eames probably knows he lied to him by now.

Panic seizes him. Sitting in his corner, the smell of milky coffee and the taste of fear, the wall hard against his back and his face burning.

Eames _knows._ If he knows where Arthur went, odds are he knows who Arthur was meeting. He knows and he won’t forgive him, will he? He’ll be his usual infuriating assumptive self, he’ll assume Arthur’s betraying him _again._

Arthur screwed him over for his country once already, why wouldn’t he do it a second time?

Jesus, why the hell did he think lying was a good idea? Why didn’t he just _explain?_

Arthur rubs at the stinging pain behind his brow.

_Eames, remember Kenya, remember the man who poured the water over your face while I held the cloth? I’m going to see him. You’re fine with that, right?_

Jesus fuck.

Arthur snaps his laptop shut.

Beside him, a teenager whines to his friend about his frigid girlfriend. Arthur wants to slap him, just one smack upside his head, just to say _Take care of her, she’s precious, you might lose her; she’ll be worth more than your impatience._

He doesn’t.

It would be nice, he thinks, to be young and impatient. To have only future regrets.

He grips the edges of his laptop and counts to fifty in his head, then backwards down to zero.

Arthur has until Friday to get to Portland. He can do this. He was _built_ to do this.

He can find Eames, can find him anywhere.

.

.

Eames doesn’t mean to drain his gin and tonic in one long gulp.

The problem is, one minute a freezing crystal glass is being pushed into his hand, full to the brim with sparkles and cucumber and fat cubes of ice, and the next he’s slamming it onto the table, empty.

He pulls the cucumber slices out with his left hand, never one to let waste go, and eats them, frozen and crisp.

“Another?” Calvin Ross asks, even though he’s already started pouring it.

Eames doesn’t even bother nodding, just hold out his hand expectantly.

They’re in the back patio of Ross’ charming little townhouse in central Lisbon; the one Eames has pretended not to know about for over a year.

Eames doesn’t exactly make a habit of mixing his medicines, but he figures he’s entitled to a little luxury after the week he’s had. In the past few days alone he’s done half a job, lost two team members, been tied up, beaten, set free, shot at, stalked, followed and otherwise chased across Europe, only to get back to the only place he’s every really called home to find it all but entirely torn down.

And to top it off, Arthur’s in America with his psychotic ex-Captain.

This last piece of news is something of a new revelation for Eames.

After leaving Marseille, he had travelled directly to Lisbon to seek out the shelter of the only man who would possibly give him a bed to stay in, despite the fact someone is clearly more than willing to cheerfully kill as many people as necessary to get hold of him, if the fates of Selma Theodore and Olly Bates are anything to go by.

Calvin Ross is rich, powerful and so morally disadvantaged when it comes to Eames, he’s fairly certain the man would have flown out to Minsk to get him if Eames had been able to call him.

He also makes an awfully good gin and tonic, which goes a long way in his favour.

Upon arriving in Lisbon, Eames had set to tracking down Arthur’s whereabouts and had quickly come to an alarming conclusion. Arthur had left France less than six hours after Eames had.

Arthur had _lied_ about it, more to the point.

Sitting on his patio chair with his leg propped up and fresh stitches in his side, Eames tries not to think about how very stupid Arthur must think he is.

“No sense in brooding about it,” Ross interrupts his thoughts, nudging a fresh gin into his hands. “He’ll be here soon anyway.”

“Hmm,” Eames replies. “You think?”

“Eames,” Ross says with a tired sigh, smoothing a hand over his slick white hair and easing himself into a seat with a glass of frosty white wine in his hand, “The last time I saw Arthur, he made it perfectly clear he would stop at nothing to keep you safe. He’s coming for you, whether you like it or not.”

Eames offers the man a sardonic grin.

“Which time would that be, Calvin? The time you left me to rot in Limbo for all eternity?”

“Four days,” Ross corrects him haughtily, looking utterly nonplussed. “Mark my words, he’ll be here tomorrow.”

Eames laughs, sipping his drink and tilting his head back to soak sunshine into his closed lids.

“Oh? And what makes you so sure?”

“Well I emailed him for a start.”

Eames whips his head up so fast, he feels the twinge in his neck run straight to the base of his spine. Feels a flash of betrayal at the man’s shrug. Ross, however, is entirely at ease.

“I need to go visit my daughter anyway. I’ll set off tomorrow morning, be back in a week or so. You can keep the keys to the house if you like.”

“Cal, you can’t –”

Ross’ eyes are cool, the wrinkled skin around them paper thin and he carries with him that silvery, gentleman’s air of _knowing things_ that Eames detests; one that reminds him of his father, and perhaps of himself.

“Eames, if you’re correct. If Luke Aldman is operational again. You have bigger problems than your boyfriend telling porky pies.”

Eames tries not to be irked by Ross’ trivial dismissal of both Arthur and his transgressions, but he thinks he fails, because Ross’ smirk deepens a little. He sips his wine and places it delicately on a coaster.

He’s right, of course, more’s the trouble.

“Thanks for letting me stay here,” he says, without really meaning to. “I don’t know how much more running I’ve got left in me.”

Ross gives him another of those knowledgeable, disbelieving looks.

There’s ivy growing up the wall behind him, flowering in the summer glaze. It’s scorching here, desert sun and city heat.

Eames looks at it, so as not to see any kindness in the old man's eyes. Or worse yet, that awful fondness.

“I dare say you’ve got a few miles in you yet, Rupert.”

It always rankles Eames, that name that doesn’t belong to him, knitted into his skin like another tattoo. Ross never dares say it around the others, for which Eames supposes he has to be grateful.

He drinks his gin in silence, finds himself wanting for words in the evening dip.

He thinks about Arthur. The way he looked sitting in bed, staring out of the window, barely a week ago, before all this started.

 _You should have woken me up sooner,_ he said, disappointed. Soft as pillows in the early morning light.

And Eames, he left, so easy, too easy.

Left like he’d thought nothing could possibly go wrong.

.

.

Ariadne touches down in Columbus and it’s pudding pie, slipping through customs and the gates and out into the fresh Georgian air.

She gets a bus into the city, will stay for a few hours then get a long bus to Nashville and then she’ll be halfway there.

Ariadne’s a practiced criminal, in her own way.

She has a carefully constructed false identity, has memorised three obscure routes out of France that she can take in a fix, and carries with her at all times a tiny USB stick that she can plug into any of her devices and scrape their memory clean with a virus so powerful, Arthur had compared it to cyanide when he gave it to her.

She’s a well-versed liar and she can keep calm even as she hands her forged passport to an armed guard for further inspection, as she discovered last year in Egypt.

Sometimes Ariadne wonders if she’d have agreed to talk to Dominick Cobb that first naïve day, had she known what it would come to. She wonders if she’d have gone back to the warehouse, to Arthur’s pleased little smirk and calm, steady-hand tutoring if she’d known that one day she’d be running from unseen enemies, hiding from prying eyes; authorities beyond her reach.

It’s not the first time she’s had to make tracks at short notice.

It is, however, the first time Arthur has asked her to do so.

Arthur. She’s never really understood where she stands with him.

Most of the time, she thinks he likes her. He compliments her skills more than most that she's seen - which is, to say, _ever -_ and he's given her a lot of work over the past three years.

It doesn’t seem unreasonable to consider him a friend. Only, that guarded way he is, it eats at her. It’s not desperate or forceful, the way Cobb had been in that first job. It’s not enough to worry her, per say. There’s no reason for her to snoop, and she likes to think she hasn’t.

She is, by nature, a creature of curiosity.

Yawning, feet scraping on the ground, she drags herself into a diner close to the bus station  out beyond the city's outskirts. She orders a coffee, which the waitress pours with a distracted smile, her eyes on the only other patron in the diner, a grumbling man who seems drunk, or close to it.

Ariadne sits in her corner, cradling her coffee and expending a great deal of effort not to glance around and make sure nobody’s watching her.

Something’s wrong, that much is clear. If she hadn’t known better, she’d have said Arthur sounded frightened on the phone, when he told her to get to Portland.

And the way Robert had glanced at her, with that little frown of concentration, like he had noticed it, too.

Ariadne takes a sip of her coffee, and for the umpteenth time sets aside the urge to call Robert. They can’t afford to get sloppy, not now.

No matter how many flesh-eating butterflies burrow their way through her guts, to think of him far away in Minsk. At least he and Eames will know what to do.

She wonders, idly, if they’ll get along, or if they’ll butt heads the way it seems Arthur and Robert do.

When it happens, it happens too quickly really for her to anticipate.

One moment she’s sipping coffee, smiling into her cup despite her best efforts, and then next the back of her neck is crawling with a particular brand of fear.

Footsteps, soft, casual.

Then a woman slides into the booth on the other side of the table, creak of cheap vinyl and the faint, distinctive smell of cigarette smoke.

The woman’s in her forties, maybe, but she has a fidgety air about her that feels younger. Russet red hair, gripped tight out of her face in a plait pulled over her shoulder, and a lot of freckles that tickle all down her throat in stardust clusters.

She’s wearing a worried, pained expression.

“Ariadne,” she says, bolder than expected.

Her eyes are very green, very pale.

Ariadne, frozen where she sits. Her mouth is slightly open, can taste coffee on her breath as it’s pulled in sharp.

The woman clasps her hands on her table, elbows out. There’s a ring on her thumb, a butterfly with a tiny green gem that makes a necklace around her throat.

When she doesn’t speak again, Ariadne asks in a crackled, horribly timid voice,

“What do you want?”

The woman smiles weakly, apologies in the tip of her head.

“My name is Olivier. I’m a friend of Eames’.”

That is not at all what Ariadne had been expecting. Her smarmy retort dies on her lips and she lets out a garbled sound instead, followed by a hum of confusion.

“You’re – what?”

“I’m a friend of Eames’. And Arthur’s. They’re in terrible danger.”

Ariadne scoffs, a nervous, knee-jerk reaction that makes her feel hot and embarrassed, especially at the woman’s visible frustration. She pulls her coffee to her chest like a shield in front of her heart.

The diner isn’t very loud, music tinkering and the quiet kitchen clinking and she isn’t sure whether making a scene would work in her favour or not.

“I’m sorry, I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Ariadne says very slowly.

 _When in doubt, play dumb,_ Arthur had said with a shrug, once. Their third job together, an irate police detective and a late check-in from their unreliable extractor.

The woman, Olivier, sighs, looking really quite sad indeed. That apology in the line of her mouth.

“That isn’t going to work, I’m afraid,” she says.

The clicking gun cock is distinctive under the table, and Ariadne feels it like a bullet already fired.

Olivier grimaces, like it’s leaving a bad taste in her mouth.

“I’ve got twelve bullets, and there are only four people in here including you. Even if I was a terrible shot, odds are I’d clean up. And I am not a terrible shot.”

She licks her lips, a crease in her brow, thoughtful as a puzzle.

Ariadne can taste the rush of blood in her pounding heart.

“If it’s not you, my next choice is Dominick Cobb,” Olivier says. “And I really don’t want to go to him.”

“Go to him for what?” Ariadne asks, and the words are little more than breath on her tongue.

She wants to glance for the exit, but it wouldn’t do her any good.

“He thinks _I_ did it,” Olivier says, a tremble in her voice. There are no tears in her eyes, but her cheeks are flushed, like there could be.

Ariadne’s fingers are gripping her cup painfully tightly. She can hear the waitress down at the diner, chatting tentatively with the drunk man, coaxing him into coffee.

“Did what?” she whispers.

Olivier swallows, blinking rapidly.

“The inception. Your inception. They think _I_ did it, and now they want me to do another one.”

Her eyes, red and bruised, sleepless. There’s something manic in her eyes, something desperate that Ariadne recognises.

“If you’re a friend of Eames and Arthur, you should know, I’m a friend of theirs, too.”

Olivier smiles again, one crook in her lips. The overhead lights in the diner are bright, washing her out, all the colour sapped from her.

“I know,” she says, tiniest of nods. “And if I thought asking nicely would convince you, I’d have tried that first.”

Strangely enough, Ariadne thinks maybe she believes her. She leans back a little in her seat, hands still visible in front of her. Takes a long, measured breath and says, quietly,

“Well then. What do you want me to do?”

.

.

There are pieces of their past splashed across pages in Arthur’s mind.

His hand buried tight in Eames’ hair, pulling that sound out of his mouth; the one that he tries to silence every time, that tastes of fierce affection and wanton love. The broad inky strokes of tattoos bleeding across Eames’ shoulders, marking moments Arthur doesn’t know, only that they happened, they were real, as he skims kisses over their edges.

Eames, looking at him on the flight to Sydney for the Fischer Job; his encouraging smiles, the kindest thing Arthur had felt in months.

Ice cream in New York and champagne in Amsterdam and that woman in Berlin who got very close to dragging them both into her bed.

What was her name?

Heta. Brazen and beautiful, and she made Eames laugh so loudly, louder than Arthur had ever heard before and instead of sharing the job, Arthur had withdrawn, resentful as the tide, because at the time all he could think was, _I’ve never made Eames laugh like that._

Arthur pulls apart the tendrils of his memories as the plane hums and glides over the Atlantic Ocean, thinks about Eames butter melting into their bed, frowning awake and snaking his legs around Arthur’s and the taste of his throat in the morning and the weak grip of his arms around Arthur’s waist as he sleeps.

He aches for it, just an hour of it, just five minutes.

Five minutes to lie in bed and know nothing but the burning weight of the man he waited ten years for, waited his whole life for even before he knew what he was waiting for at all.

Arthur presses his forehead against the little rounded window, eyes clenched shut.

The seat beside him, empty, and it seems to swallow him whole.

.

.


	8. FIVE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Darlings,
> 
> Long time no update, huh? So sorry. I accidentally-on-purpose fell into a NaNoWriMo wormhole and have just crawled out with a few days to spare. This is more like half a chapter of what I wanted to update, but it's been a while since I touched on any of my stories and I really want to push ahead...
> 
> Thank you so much for your kind and lovely kudos and reviews, they mean a lot to me and do keep my brain ticking even when I get distracted!
> 
> Love to all you folks,
> 
> LRCx

.

.

It’s later than he realises by the time Dom scurries his children to bed.

James has been off-kilter for days, his dreams keeping him precarious, on the edge of wakeful fright every time he manages to doze off.

Phillipa, in her usual matronly manner that might be amusing if it wasn’t so tragic, has been attentive and vigilant. No matter how decidedly she is put to bed by her father every night, every morning she is to be found dutifully sleeping on the floor beside her brother’s bed, her little hand outstretched, close enough for him to grab if he needs her.

Dom’s losing hope.

It’s not that he had thought there would be no lasting effects on his children, not after losing their mother and then their father so quickly, so terribly, denied the right to understand why in any meaningful way. Only, it’s been four years since Dom made it home and the truth is, Dom had sort of hoped things would at least be better by now,

If anything, they’re getting worse.

Today hasn’t been a good day, not at all, and it isn’t the children’s fault, isn’t ever their fault but even less so today.

Today, Dom has bee distracted, his patience stretched to peeling tears like saran wrap.

His cell phone has been heavy in his jeans pocket. Silent.

He doesn’t know why he expects it to ring. Arthur had been very clear on the phone almost four days ago.

_If I don’t call back in an hour…_

He hadn’t called. Not one hour later, not one day later. In fact, when Dom had lost his resolve and tried, twenty-six hours after Arthur’s self-imposed deadline, it was to a dead dial.

The house is quiet.

James sleeping, Phillipa reading under her bedcovers, no doubt thinking herself quite the con artist for fooling her father with that fake snoring she displayed when he checked on her twenty minutes ago.

Dom sits in his study, his phone in his hands and the desk lamp casting huge shadows in it yellow glow.

He can feel it in the back of his throat, in his chest and behind his eyes. Base terror and a well of untouched grief.

He can still recall the exact clenching feeling of walking into that trashed hotel room, the window open, its veiled curtain fluttering enticingly.

 _Assume the worst?_ Dom had said to Arthur over the phone, as if that wasn’t his default reaction already.

The heating is on full, it’s stifling inside the house but nothing touches the rock of ice in Dom’s lungs.

He takes a steadying breath, rubs the weary lines of his eyes and puts down his cell, picking up instead the secure line of his office phone.

He has the number written in his address book, filed under _Medical Em._

He types it in with quick, reluctant jabs of his pinky.

It rings for some time, and Dom only then thinks to count up the time difference, wincing slightly.

Just as he’s about to give up, however, someone picks up.

 _“Sema,”_ a voice says, so brisk and tilted Dom gives a moment’s pause.

“Yusuf?” he says, poised to slam down the phone at a moment’s notice. “It’s Dom Cobb.”

 _“Mr Cobb!”_ Yusuf says with jovial caution, clearing his throat with a hasty cough and a stutter of laughter. _“What is a man such as yourself calling for at a time like this?”_

Dom can read that question perfectly but chooses to ignore its true meaning.

Staring at the half-complete jigsaw puzzle on the floor James left alone two days ago, Dom replies,

“I was hoping you could help me locate Eames.”

There is a long, heart drum silence.

 _“I thought you had a point man for that sort of thing?”_ Yusuf says very pointedly, very slowly.

Dom closes his eyes, thumbing his dry tearducts.

“Is he still based in Mombasa?” he asks without comment.

He _knows_ Arthur’s always been able to find Eames. That’s the problem, he’s hoping it’s a two-way street.

According to Arthur, Eames was on a job in Minsk four days ago but that means shit all, because four days is a quarter of a job, half a job, a whole job. Four days is a hospital stay or a hideout in the desert; it’s home safe and sound or decomposing in a shallow grave.

Before Dom can point this out, though, Yusuf laughs at his question.

_“Cobb, Eames hasn’t been in Africa for more than a couple of weeks at a time in years.”_

That makes Dom frown. Even without Arthur’s master tracking skills, he knew Eames’ reputation is built on a bedrock of African soil. Why would he change that?

Eames hadn’t mentioned it, the scant few times they’d crossed paths since the Fischer Job.

“Then where is he?” he barks, harsher than he means to in his confusion.

Yusuf sighs loudly in a display of impatience.

_“Oh, I don’t know. He’s a shy bastard, you know. I don’t have an exact address.”_

“What do you have?”

_“A locker in Montpellier, where I post his somnacin batches to every few months. But Cobb, that’s meaningless, he could be based a thousand miles away from there. He probably is, if he’s got any sense left in his head. Although perhaps not, after his little trip.”_

Yusuf mutters his last few words with a dark tone, one that Dom doesn’t like at all.

“What does that mean?” he asks, brimming with suspicion.

 _“Surely Arthur told you,”_ Yusuf scoffs, sounding so downright disbelieving Dom feels a little offended on multiple fronts. _“The boy got himself dropped in a forge, hit Limbo running. Bad somnacin. It killed Wallace and Damson.”_

Dom had heard about the mysterious deaths of Wallace and Damson a few years ago; hadn’t put much thought into it, though, because they weren’t exactly the worthiest of devils. He hadn’t heard mention of Eames being caught up in that, least of all from Arthur.

Dom takes a steadying gulp of hot air and tries his best to ignore the gnawing doubt in his gut.

He hadn’t thought much on what coming home would mean, what walking away from the bulk of his contact with dreamshare would do.

He hadn’t anticipated the cracks that would widen in his relationship with Arthur, but they’re so deep now, deeper than they ever were.

Dom leaned on the younger man so heavily in his exile from the States; it’s a dizzying combination of guilt and hurt pride, to realise Arthur wasn’t prepared to lean so heavily in return. Did he think Dom wouldn’t drop everything for him in return?

He thinks about Eames, who was so desperate not to tempt the fate of Limbo that he was willing to forfeit the inception, a job he’d explicitly told Dom was an opportunity he’d been waiting years for.

If he’d known, he’d have been there. Of course he would have.

 _“Cobb,”_ Yusuf continues before Dom can voice even a single vowel of this. _“I’ll give you the address in Montpellier, but that’s all I have for you. And I think you should probably prepare yourself for the distinct possibility that if Arthur’s gone off grid, Eames will have done the same.”_

And with that, he rattles off an address, complete with coordinates. Dom barely manages to scribble it under Yusuf’s number in his address book before the call drops.

Dom knows better than to call back.

In the ringing quiet that follows, Dom tries to shake off the perturbed prickling of his spine, and contemplates his neck move.

He’s got no contacts to seek out any jobs going on in Minsk, and he can’t well go chasing down obscure lockers in Montpellier, not when it’s more than likely only going to lead to further clues and not the man himself.

Still, he has to _try._

There’s only one person he can think of who might be able to help. Able and willing, that is.

Even then, Dom’s not entirely certain she’s still in Montpellier.

He dials a second number from the same phone, this time from memory. It’s in his list, just like his childhood home address and Mal’s first cell number.

It’ll be even more unacceptable an hour in France than it was in Kenya, but Dom knows he wouldn’t be any better received at four in the afternoon on a balmy Sunday. There’s no sense in waiting.

After a few beeps of the dial tone, a harsh woman’s voice answers.

_“Qui est-ce?”_

“Sylvie?” Dom says, and can only hope she hasn’t learned to scent fear through radio waves the way she could in person. “It’s Dom Cobb.”

Sylvie snorts viciously.

 _“Dominick,”_ she says coolly. Her voice is softer as she says it, but no less of a threat. _“What in all the stars could bring you to me?”_

The French in her tone was always thicker than Mal’s, a little forced, almost as if she needed to remind him that she was deigning to speak in a foreign tongue for him.

“I wanted to ask a favour of you,” he says.

There’s nothing to gain from being polite, not with Sylvie Deniau. She always appreciated directness over manners.

_“I did you a favour six years ago, Dominick.”_

Dom rubs his jaw, feels the scruff of his almost-beard under his fingers, scratchy.

“And I was very grateful at the time,” Dom reminds her.

Her breath in thin in his ear, a reedy sound of her sadness, and of her trust, weak as it is. He can hear her rustling, the snicker of sheets, the click of a bedside lamp.

_“What is this favour that is so important it could not wait four more hours? I sleep happily in my bed, Dominick Cobb, even if you do not.”_

Dom smiles, his forehead cupped in his palm as he stares at James’ jigsaw, scattered on the carpet in little splodges of blue and red and green.

“I’ve got an address for you. It’s a delivery locker, somewhere in Montpellier. I’d like you to investigate it, if you have time. The man whom it belongs to is a friend, and it’s important that I find him quickly.”

_“What is the address?”_

There’s something sharp in her question, something that comes not from a place of benign ignorance, but rather deep-seated suspicion. She asks, cat-curious,

_“Is it in the station of Saint-Roch? Egrek-quatre?”_

Dom holds his breath, daren’t agree but he can’t deny it either. It is meaningless, a meaningless coincidence. The world of dreamshare is small, yes, but that doesn’t mean –

 _“I didn’t realise you knew Nicky, Dominick,”_ Sylvie teases, and he can see her grin as it was when they met, twenty-one-year-old students with graphite on their fingers and pen marks on their lips.

“I don’t,” he says truthfully.

Sylvie laughs, a chittering sound, so like Mal’s it feels like fingers burying in his stomach even as it makes him smile.

 _“Yes, you do,”_ she chuckles. _“Face as pretty as his paintings. He made me a lovely Titian print in exchange for collecting his somnacin for him, when he’s on business.”_

Dom hasn’t the faintest clue why Eames would have a safehouse in southern France, or any part of France for the matter.

For as long as he’s known the forger, Eames has displayed a thinly veiled level of contempt for the vast majority of Western Europe, sparing a courteous few words for Scandinavia when pressed.

Dom might not recognise the name Nicky, but he has no doubt he knows less than half of Eames’ working aliases.

“Don’t suppose you know where he is?” he asks, and Sylvie has the good grace not to comment on how badly he fails at nonchalance as he asks it.

_“Can’t say I do, I’m afraid. I hope nothing terrible has happened.”_

It’s about as close to fishing as Dom’s ever heard her get.

Sitting back in his chair, he stares at Yusuf’ phone number, at the address below it and the scattered dots from his pen that he’s tapped against the page with agitated flicks of his wrist.

“Me too,” he replies without irony. “Thanks for your help, Sylvie.”

 _“I didn’t do anything, did I?”_ she says.

He can still recall with perfect clarity the way she nudged her papers across her desk, tilted just far enough for him to read her notes when he lost track during classes in their first semester. Her glossy pink nail polish and the way she said, _I’m having Christmas with my friend, Mallorie._

“I’m grateful anyway,” he tells her. “Goodnight, Sylvie.”

 _“Good morning, Dominick,”_ she replies, before putting down the phone just quickly enough to interrupt her grey dawn laugh.

Dom drops the phone and eases himself out of his chair, moving instead to crouch beside James’ puzzle.

It’s one of Mal’s old ones, definitely too difficult for an eight-year-old. Phillipa must have chosen it for him.

Dom picks up one of the floating blues, rolling its edges in his fingers and scanning the puddles of put-together pieces for the right space.

He’s back at square one, frustration crawling up into his belly like ants through a crevice.

He thinks again on Saito’s phone call. It’s a distant whisper in his head, though it was barely scraping a week ago.

_It may well be that they shall come for you and your team next._

Dom can’t help but fear Saito was right in his assumptions. That perhaps there was no _next._ There was just them, now.

He presses the jigsaw piece into a gap, forming another meaningless part of the Indian Ocean in Mal’s ridiculous, two-thousand-piece map of Asia. Then, he hears the patter of footsteps above him, the creak of the disloyal floorboards under the carpet.

Phillipa, creeping unsteadily into James’ room again.

Dom leans back until he’s sitting on the floor, picks up another piece of the jigsaw, and waits for James’ nightmares to rouse the stillness of the house.

.

.

Once they’re outside the city limits, nudging shy of one-ten with the radio on at a hum, things get easier.

Ariadne is sitting shotgun, her eyes on Olivier’s hands wrapped loosely around the steering wheel. The woman’s shoulders are tense, but her expression has lost some of its hollow bone hardness.

They’re going too fast for her to worry about Ariadne throwing herself out of the car, or even consider trying to wrestle for control of the wheel. The car is an old Chevrolet model; pretty, as far as car’s ever really can be. Ariadne’s never exactly been an admirer of hulks of steel that emit planet-killing fumes.

All in all, barring their first meeting, Ariadne isn’t having a wholly unpleasant time.

Yes, so they stopped in really questionable motel and Olivier slept with her bed against the door and not only her gun in her hand but somehow, with her _finger on the trigger_ without shooting herself in her sleep.

 _Can I trust you are as smart as Arthur thinks you are?_ She’d asked, which Ariadne did not need translating for her.

She had nodded, laid down on the other bed, and promptly slept.

Now, tucked in a car that she doesn’t _think_ is stolen, she’s feeling oddly well-rested. Her phone might be in her captor’s pocket, along with her purse and passport, but she has a fresh bottle of water and a half-gulped pack of six granola bars and so far, she hasn’t even been threatened with handcuffs.

She wonders if Olivier is the worst kidnapper in the world, or quite possibly the best.

They speed down the freeway now, amongst a steady if minor stream of other cars in the early morning light.

Almost forty minutes pass by in flurries of landscape and roadside before Ariadne speaks.

“Are you going to tell me who’s after you?” she asks in a pleasant, conversational manner, as if she’s asking about the song playing on the radio.

Not that she needs to ask that one, of course. Her mother harboured an ungodly devotion to Paul Weller and had raised her children accordingly.

Olivier shifts in her seat, glancing at Ariadne; flash of dry-grass-green.

“How much do you know about the designers of dreamshare?”

Ariadne lets out an accidental laugh, sinking back into her seat.

“Nothing, but I imagine they were batshit crazy.”

Olivier licks her lips, curled into a tight, confessional smirk.

She cracks open her window just enough to let the air strip through the car, the breeze cool and quick.

“Quite,” she agrees, then shakes her head. “I don’t know. It’s so stupid, what we do.”

Ariadne frowns at that.

“How so?” she asks, not having to feign curiosity.

Olivier quirks a thin, copper pale eyebrow, eyes not leaving the road.

 _“Dreamshare._ We’re all playing some great big game of who can keep the most secrets. Only, how do you win that game? If the point is to _not tell_ anyone. It’s exhausting, and for what?”

Olivier takes a deep, diver’s breath through her nose, holds it in her puffed chest like a child preparing to scream. Instead, when her voice comes out again, it’s threaded with defeat.

“I mean, take _you._ You’re not even a contender. It would take nothing for me to find your place in Paris. Or your parents, your brother, your sister.”

She says it so casually, as if she isn’t pouring cold, viscous acid down Ariadne’s throat with her words, flicking strands of red hair off her face with a toss of her head.

Ariadne feels her stomach flip.

“What –”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Olivier continues in that same tone, breezy as the air snickering in through the slit of her window. “Nobody’s coming after your family. But that’s the _problem_ with people like you. Like Dom Cobb and Mal Miles. They were civilians, they didn’t belong in this world. I mean, tell me, Ariadne. What’s Arthur’s real name?”

Ariadne blinks, quelling her immediate response.

She quells her secondary response, too, because the truth is, she’s purposefully not thought about it.

A tiny part of her thought, just maybe, there was some measure of truth to Arthur’s name.

She can’t bring herself to admit that to this woman, though.

Instead, Ariadne takes in Olivier’s hard frown and the way she keeps glancing at the rear view mirror of the car just a little too often.

“It doesn’t matter,” she says after almost a minute’s consideration.

That, at least, is also true.

Knowing Arthur’s given name wouldn’t change anything. He would still be the point man who taught her about Penrose Stairs, who offers her jobs he doesn’t trust with anyone else and who sends her obscure Christmas cards and who criticises everything like he’s being on commission for it.

He’d still be Arthur to her.

“I don’t care,” she clarifies.

Olivier raises both her eyebrows.

“I used to think so, too,” she replies.

“Well, what’s your real name?” Ariadne asks bitterly, leaning into her window and watching the edge of the road, as if willing it to fall away.

Olivier laughs, then, warmer than expected.

“Sophie McLoughlin,” she says, quiet and cheerful.

Ariadne doesn’t turn back to look at her, stubborn sulk of pride, but her smile crawls over her expression in tiny shifts of muscles, her mouth curling around her unlaugh.

The more bizarre of things; she thinks Olivier might have just told her the truth.

Ariadne bites her bottom lip, worrying the skin between her teeth.

She hears Olivier clear her throat uncomfortably, and prepares for some kind of recovery lie, or perhaps even a belated denial.

She doesn’t get either, though, because that’s when, out of nowhere, another car rams hard into the back of their Chevrolet, and they skid off the road in a squeal of churning engine.

.

.

_Arthur, a package belonging to you arrived on my doorstep. Afraid I don't have a forwarding address, so you'll have to collect. Até logo. CR_

The email taunts him, long after he deletes it.

Arthur knows his own hypocrisy, knows better than to resent Eames for running off to Portugal, to _Calvin Ross_ of all people. If Arthur hadn’t been in America, Eames wouldn’t have needed to go to anyone at all.

So, it’s failure that rests heaviest on Arthur’s heart when he gets to Lisbon, and it’s failure that stalls him on his way to the inner suburbs of the city.

It takes Arthur all of forty minutes to find Ross’ address, where Eames has apparently situated himself.

It takes almost twice that for him to pluck up the feathery courage to actually knock on the door, though.

He’s vultured through every possible reaction to finding Eames, to being confronted with his grumpy cat’s snarl and his snippy manner. By the time he finally takes the correct turn to the house, feet tapping loudly on the empty sidewalk, he’s swung right back around to defensive resilience.

Eames will be angry yes.

Eames will be mean, yes.

Eames will be suspicious, yes.

Beneath all that, though, Arthur reminds himself as he stares at the front door with its brass knocker and wide letter box, Eames will be feeling betrayed _._ Betrayed by Arthur’s lies, by his deception, by his implied lack of trust.

 _(You left,_ Eames said with tears in his eyes, way down in the pit of Limbo, and all Arthur could say was, _I came back.)_

So, bolder than he feels, he walks right up to the cherry dark door and knocks three times, as loudly as he can.

It’s a hot day, the bees are hungry, and the flowers are shrivelling under the sun’s punishment. Sweat prickles over Arthur’s face and he wipes his forehead in a gesture that might be mistaken for nervousness.

He waits, and he waits; waits long enough for the teeth in his spine to chew a little harder.

He knocks again, four this time, not as hard but quicker, almost repeats it immediately only then, muffled from the inside of the looming townhouse,

_“Yes! Christ Almighty.”_

It’s unmistakably Eames, sounding unmistakably irate.

Arthur’s heart does its reliably inconvenient stutter in his chest, hearing him, even as his own fists steel by his sides.

He tries to remember what he was going to say first, tries to cover up his unease with a calm mask, something not too _Arthur,_ yet not too _un-Arthur,_ either.

The handle turns, the door swings back and Arthur opens his mouth but instead of words coming out, a gasp of horror pulls into his lungs.

The entire right side of Eames’ face is awash with mottled bruises. Some are greening at the edges already. His eye is puffy, his jaw swollen, and even standing still Arthur can see he’s favouring his right leg.

He’s dressed in loose pants and a t-shirt, his arms tanned and tattooed and, yes, badly chafed around the wrists, as if they’d been torn recently.

Arthur is struck momentarily dumb by the surprise of it, his head fuzzy with confusion.

Then, a surge of anger rushes through his every pore. He forgets why he’s here, why Eames is here, forgets everything he was supposed to unburden himself with and sees only Eames, harmed. Can hear it in his head like alarm bells.

_Someone hurt him, someone harmed him, someone touched what wasn’t theirs, someone –_

“Who was it?” he asks, tongue cutting into his teeth like glass.

His very spine is taut with rage, he can see Eames, his eyes blue in the sunlight, skin bursting with bruises.

Eames, who stares blankly back at Arthur, opens his mouth and says,

“I thought you were dead.”

Arthur frowns, feeling a jolt of cold surprise.

“You what?” he asks.

Eames shuffles back a hop, gesturing into the hallway. Arthur follows the line of his hand into the house, all modern lines and art nouveau. The antithesis of Calvin Ross’ last home.

As he passes Eames, he tries not to lean in, tries not to reach but he must fail because Eames pulls back, head turned as he closes the door.

Unable to risk an outright rejection, Arthur makes his way down the thin hallway to a large kitchen.

It’s very light, periwinkle blue and smells of nose pinch chilli, garam masala and tea. Arthur tries not to inhale too deeply, nor be too comforted by it.

Eames follows at an achingly slow pace, limping his way with his jaw locked tight and his fists heavy on the walls for help.

He takes a seat on a stool at a high breakfast bar, and Arthur walks to the other side of it, so that they are facing one another.

Rather, so that Arthur is facing Eames.

Eames’ eyes are diverted to his knuckles, his fists bumping together on the bar top, elbows out, so that he is slightly hunched. He’s scruffy, that post-job, bad-job kind that makes Arthur’s breastbone twinge with worry.

“Eames,” Arthur says to his downturned eyes. “Look at me.”

“I can’t,” Eames replies, voice tight through clenched teeth.

“Why?”

“Because I might punch you in the fucking face, Arthur.”

Arthur tries not to recoil at the vehemence of it.

Eames _means_ that. He really does.

Even if he regretted it immediately after, he’d mean it at the time and that knowledge hurts far more than the words, far more even than a punch to the face would.

Arthur’s teeth worry at the bitten sides of his tongue, fingers tapping lightly at the breakfast bar. He wants to ask where Calvin Ross is, but there’s no sense in stalling. It’s obvious Ross isn’t here and quite frankly that’s for the best.

Arthur’s not entirely sure he wouldn’t shoot the man between the eyes if he saw him.

Eames is breathing loudly through his nose, sharp quick breaths fuelling the simmer of his temper where he sits.

Or perhaps, Arthur realises belatedly, masking bruised ribs.

“Tell me,” he says to no avail whatsoever.

Eames won’t even acknowledge his hands when he lays them flat in the table in some feeble show of submission.

“Alright,” Arthur concedes quietly. His mouth is dry. He shifts where he stands, bags left at his feet, sweat trickling down his back. “Well, I need to tell you something. You saw Sinclair in Minsk, is that correct?”

For a moment, he thinks Eames won’t even answer him.

Then he swallows loudly and mutters, “Yes,” like it’s a tooth pulled too early.

Arthur nods, eyes darting across the room, refrigerator to cafetière to spice rack.

“Good,” he says, nervous, “And, is he still alive?”

“What?” Eames snarls, eyes snapping up to Arthur’s, frown deep set, before returning to his hands. “Yes. Fuck you, Arthur.”

It’s a hot, defensive jibe and even as exposed as he feels, Arthur can’t take it to heart.

He sighs, frustrated and relieved.

“I didn’t – he didn’t double-cross you, Eames. I sent him to collect you.”

“You what?” Eames scoffs, and his eyes reach Arthur’s chin before darting away.

His mouth, gaping horror. Nobody can pull off self-righteousness like Eames in a mood.

Spying an opening in the bloodshot whites of Eames’ eyes, the slackness of his surprised shoulders, Arthur cuts in.

“Eames, why did you think I was dead?”

Too late, Eames clams up, stubborn as an oyster, his face downturned. Arthur pushes his hands closer to Eames’, pausing when Eames allows it.

“Eames,” he says, as gently as he can when blood is burning in his ears. “What happened?”

The returning mutter of laughter isn’t promising. Arthur slides a stool over the loud tiles and shuffles backwards onto it. He only realises, then, how much his feet are aching, his calf muscles spasming with exhaustion.

Between them on the breakfast bar, their hands, so close.

Then, Eames takes a shuddering breath and starts.

“Zumani tried to sell me to another party through Hugo Schevner.”

Arthur sits up a little, startled.

“You paid Schevner back.”

“Yes, I know that, thanks,” Eames snaps, and his mouth looks incredibly close to smiling, before the life in it drops away, leaving him harrowed as his bruises. “I am certain it was to Aldman, although I have no real proof.”

Arthur, for his part, requires no further proof than that.

He gestures for Eames to go on and he does, in a stilted, choking voice.

“Schevner wanted nothing to do with it. Washed his hands clean of me. Leon got me out of Belarus and into France.”

Arthur struggles not to reveal his surprise at that. It was one thing to have gone to Calvin Ross for help, but Eames must have been in deep shit to call _Leon_ of all people. They’ve never exactly warmed to each other, not in all the time Arthur’s known either of them.

Eames licks his lips and continues,

“I got back to the flat to find it turned inside out. Madame Segal had gone underground, the PASIV was missing.”

His eyes are dark as sin with accusation when, finally, he stares at Arthur, looks him right in the eyes and says,

“I was convinced I was going to find your body behind the sofa.”

Arthur can feel Eames’ panic like his own, can’t even imagine what he’d have done in Eames’ place.

He thinks about the apartment, torn to bits, their home. Someone has found them, found their sanctuary and Arthur feels his throat burn to think of it destroyed.

“Jesus,” he mutters, the words heavy in his lungs. “Eames I’m so –”

But Eames laughs, then, a horrible sound that twists his face up so ugly and hard.

“Only, then I noticed your key was gone, too. So, I told myself, you got out. Somehow you, with all your magical _Arthurness,_ got wind of what happened and escaped.”

Arthur blinks, looking away as if to hide from the scald of those words. Eames, he doesn’t even look angry, despite the shard-glass edge of his words. He’s so goddamn wounded and Arthur put that expression there, put that tremor in his voice as he says,

“Imagine my surprise after I got here, when I found out you weren’t even in the country when it happened. That you had pissed off to America, to see _David Ezra,_ before I’d even gotten to Minsk in the first place.”

“Eames,” Arthur says, because it’s the only word in his vast vocabulary he doesn’t have the means to fully express. It’s a gesture and a phrase and it is the only word he’ll never forget.

But Eames, his bruised face is a mask of purple and blue and he folds his arms loosely across his chest, pushing back far enough to take in Arthur in all his shame.

“I’m not surprised you didn’t tell me, Arthur,” he says; that horrible, horrible laugh. “And I’m more than used to you lying to me, it’s one of your greatest skills.”

“That’s not fair,” Arthur snaps, white hot _something_ flashing through him.

“Isn’t it?” Eames sneers, like he used to sneer, when they weren’t better than this, when they didn’t love each other enough to just _stop._ “You had every opportunity to tell me. You went out of your way to keep this from me because you knew what it meant.”

“Because I knew you would try to stop me,” Arthur tries to say but the words stammer out and Eames slams his fist down in a crack on the bar top.

 _“AND WITH BLOODY GOOD REASON!”_ he roars, and the words seem to ring in the air above them, through the pepper stench of the kitchen and the warmth of the sun in the window.

Arthur flinches hard, curling into himself, away from the scourge of those words, so violent and true.

When he dares look up, from his trembling fingers, Eames is staring at him, breathing hard and quick and loud, lips bruised and parted.

“Why did you send Sinclair after me?” he asks, before Arthur can respond, perhaps to avoid whatever response Arthur can dream up.

Arthur swallows, rubbing away the sweat from his temple and searching about him for the right words but they don’t come. So instead, the truth tumbles out,

“You’re right about Aldman, I think,” he says, and Eames arches his eyebrows high in a question mark look, so Arthur continues, “E-Ezra thinks Adman is after him, too. Because of, you know.”

Eames’ smirk, cold as a knife in Arthur’s gut.

“And what? Sinclair just happened to be there, too?”

Arthur huffs, feeling spun in circles. How is he supposed to explain _now?_

“No, he was with Ariadne –”

“Bloody – Ariadne?” Eames cries, and in his surprise he forgets to looks angry, the weight of his stare lifting their burden from Arthur at least for a moment, enough for him to catch his breath. “Jesus, what the fuck does she have to do with the price of milk?”

Despite himself, despite Eames’ temper, Arthur gives him a tiny grin.

“That is not a real expression.”

“Don’t change the subject,” Eames snips and Arthur can’t tell if it’s softer or not. It’s quieter, at least. “Ariadne. Explain. Now.”

Even when they were at odds, across their years, Eames was never cold to Arthur. It was impossible, it seemed, because he was always _warmth._ Tanned and golden and present, hot skin under cool sheets and a rich laugh like rubies.

Arthur can’t stand the distrust in Eames’ eyes, not when only days ago he woke up to that soft mouth pressed against his spine, to those eyes finding his in the dark and a whisper of good fortune across their tangled tongues.

“Eames, I –”

But if Eames’ thoughts are lingering close to Arthur’s, he does a better job of hiding them, because he interrupts viciously,

“Don’t.” Squeezes his eyes shut and takes a steadying breath. “Just tell me what you know. Tell me the truth. I’m sick to death of pretending to believe a word you say, Arthur.”

It heaves all the air from Arthur’s lungs. A shiver runs through him despite the hot cloying air. There’s sweat on Eames’ brow, and dried blood on the corner of his lip.

“I never meant…” Arthur says but he doesn’t need Eames’ derisive eyes to silence that thought.

It doesn’t matter what he meant, it never did. He knew he was betraying Eames when he so much as answered Ezra’s call.

“Yeah. Ok,” he says instead, nodding a small agreement, quiet at the sunshine. “Ok. I’ll tell you.”

“Thank you,” Eames says, and he doesn’t sound grateful in the slightest.

.

.


	9. SIX

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dearest darlings,
> 
> So, a little short perhaps, but I think maybe shorter and quicker will be better? I don't know. I hope you enjoy it. I have a lot of things floating around   
>  on pages at the moment, including Cosmic, for any followers of my other current Inception series, so hopefully I'll be a bit more active again soon!
> 
> Thanks for reading, and your lovely kudos and reviews, it's always lovely to hear/read your thoughts.
> 
> Always love,  
> LRCx

.

.

The problem is simple, and hard to put into words. Rather, it’s hard to put into kind words.

In many ways, it’s too easy to put into words.

Like the foyer of the hotel in Madrid, when Arthur said, like butter on his tongue, _You’re so hard to love, I don’t know how I ever did._

Only, that’s not right. It’s not true.

Eames isn’t hard to love, quite the opposite.

It’s just hard work, being in love with someone who is made of other people.

Occasionally, Eames does or says things so wildly separate from anything Arthur knows about him, he’ll feel like he’s missing a step on a dark staircase. That stomach-drop pit of fear that leaves him disoriented and he’ll worry, then, in the quiet of his solitary fears.

Was that a forge, or a fiction, or a fantasy?

Worse still, was it some other iteration of Eames, a past person he’d sloughed off like a snake, one skin to the next?

The problem is simple.

Sometimes, Arthur thinks he might have fallen in love with someone who doesn’t exist.

Arthur sits on a patio chair in the suntrap garden, staring at Eames, who is stretched out with his bad leg elevated and a glass of wine in his hand, reading through all the data Arthur’s managed to collect on Luke Aldman’s whereabouts. He sighs several times in a petty display of boredom and seems unaffected by Arthur’s falcon focus on the unbruised side of his face.

Eames takes another gulp of wine, dropping the glass just a tad too hard on the metal wrought table.

The papers follow soon after, scattering with the force of his fingers.

He keeps looking at them, though, his eyes glossy with his thoughts.

“I won’t ask you to help,” Arthur says truthfully, and Eames snorts, glancing at him with pained amusement.

“No,” he says. “You’re hoping I’ll offer, though.”

Arthur wants to deny it, wants to so badly yet he can’t, not when mere hours ago he swore he would stop lying.

Eames looks momentarily surprised, then a gathering of thunder clouds in his eyes make him turn away.

“He’s probably got Olivier, you know,” Eames continues in a pleasant, conversational voice, a white wine in Portugal voice.

Arthur blinks and wonders if now is the best time to come clean about Cobb’s phone call, too.

It would be deliberately cruel of Eames if he offers his help now, and they both know it. There will be no forgetting.

“What should I do, Arthur?” Eames asks, and it’s as honest a question as he’s ever heard.

Eames doesn’t look like himself at all, looks like another Eames, one that’s vulnerable and confused, with bruises on his face and he’s tracing a deep, silvered scar in his hand like it’s still hurting, twelve years on.

“What would you do?” he asks and to that, Arthur has no good answer, because they both know Arthur doesn’t share Eames’ capacity for forgiveness any more that Eames shares Arthur’s capacity for betrayal.

Nobody would suspect who the liar between them is, not when Eames is so much better at it than Arthur most of the time.

“I _am_ sorry,” Arthur says, boyhood earnest and Eames smiles, and it wobbles ever so slightly, just for a moment, just enough for Arthur’s heart to seize in his chest.

“I know,” Eames replies. He reaches for Arthur’s hand, and his skin is very warm; Arthur traces the deep groove in his palm, the bright line he rarely touches, their unspoken pact.

Arthur can still recall with perfect clarity, the crunch of fine bones as he drove his knife through this hand, and the deafening scream when Eames realised they weren’t dreaming.

“I ruined it, didn’t I?” he asks in a thick voice, thick Portugal air, humid and a trembling of words in his mouth. He can’t even bring himself to say _again,_ even though it’s always _again._ Again and again and again.

Eames withdraws his hand; kisses the pads of two saluting fingers and presses his affection into Arthur’s cheek like a sticker to a book.

“Fancy a game of chess?” he asks, almost as quiet as his unspoken answer to Arthur’s stupid, stupid question.

Arthur smiles, and his eyelashes sting, and he thinks he’s probably about to cry, he can feel the muscles in his face spasming.

“Yeah,” he chokes, even as his ribcage starts to cave into his lungs. “I can stay for a game.”

Eames nods approvingly. He’s so close, it would take nothing for Arthur to reach out and touch him, to kiss his cut mouth, feel his hair between his fingers. He can smell the damp of his skin, hear the hitch in his breath.

“Eames,” he starts, silenced by Eames’ eyes, so close he can count each eyelash yet they’ve never been further away.

“Don’t, Arthur,” he says, and it’s so apologetically tender, Arthur thinks he’ll never hear another word the same again.

.

.

Four thousand miles away, Ariadne Collins opens her eyes in a hospital in Columbus, and a kind faced nurse blinks back.

.

.

He should have been gone hours ago.

The clock ticks, anxious hours and rapid minutes. He watches its hands scurrying. The curtains are drawn shut, blocking out all the natural light. Only two lamps illuminate the room, dark furnishings and a modest sized bed.

Sinclair looks at the bed, at its shivering occupant.

Olly’s hands have been seen to, every finger reset and wrapped but there’s little chance he’ll ever draw with that attentively fine detail ever again. His raccoon bruise eyes are closed, sweat on his upper lip and puddling in his clavicle.

“He’s going into shock,” the man bent over his sweltering patient had said and proceeded to do very little about it.

He’d locked the room behind him, and Sinclair hadn’t so much as moved in his chair since.

He can hear, occasionally, voices and footsteps. They’re faint, and even straining his ears gets him nothing but a headache to match the deep frown in Olly’s brow.

The men that had grabbed them a mile from the nearest station hadn’t been gentle, per say. They hadn’t been deliberately rough, either.

They’d been transported here, to this thin, trembling house, wearing hoods that had smelled of dog hair and pinched around their throats. The man who’d treated Olly’s injuries had been ill-experienced, but even his roughshod care was better than nothing.

Olly flinches in his fevered sleep, and Sinclair flinches with him.

Outside the locked door, voices.

Sinclair knows he should have been gone hours ago. They should be on a passenger train or in the back of a cab, anywhere but here, in the heart of the city. He doesn’t know who grabbed him, if it’s Zumani or if Zumani hasn’t even realised his hostage is gone yet.

He shouldn’t be here. Time is precious, glittering and fading like pyrite in a cave.

Suddenly, there’s the sound of a key being fiddled into a lock. Sinclair roots himself to his chair like an oak tree; tries to keep his eyes on Olly but the door opens to a dark corridor and in walks a stocky man, with an oily face and thin goatee.

He looks most displeased.

“This is the second time you’ve been brought unsolicited to my doorstep, boy,” the man says with a short, Belarusian lilt.

Sinclair momentarily starts, not taking kindly to being referred to as a _boy._ Then he realises the man is talking not to him, but rather _at_ the unconscious Olly Bates, who looks more like a boy than ever, with his sweaty green tipped hair and his pasty face.

“And who are you?” the man barks turning his attention to Sinclair. “If you’re here to sell me more debtless criminals, I don’t want them. I want no part in this game and you can tell Zumani that yourself. If I decide to let you go.”

The inklings of understanding, like the first soft patters of rain before a thunderstorm, fall over Sinclair.

“I don’t work for Zumani,” he says, shrugging truthfully and maintaining steady, stone-faced eye contact with the man.

The man whom Sinclair would bet his left hand, and perhaps even his right one too, is Hugo Schevner.

Schevner seems if anything more displeased at this revelation.

“So, you’re with the buyer, then?” he snorts, planting his hands on his hips; a move that tucks back his suit jacket just enough to reveal the holstered gun under his arm.

Sinclair shakes his head, trying to keep casual, but Schevner isn’t looking.

“I should just bury you both and be done with it. Should have buried Sorrell, too. Look here, I don’t know the first damn thing about any dreamers. I don’t care about your military vendettas or your special services or your Canterbury Tales. I want to be removed from this equation, do you hear me?”

“Canterbury?” Sinclair asks before he can shut his traitorous trap.

Schevner’s face turns a little darker with anger, his lower lip jutting out.

“I shall not be party to this chaos,” he grunts. “I don’t like blood spilt on my streets. But do you know what I like _less?_ Blood spilt by someone who is not me, that’s what.”

Sinclair shifts in his seat. Schevner hasn’t reached for his gun, and he likes to think if the man had the decency to splint up Olly’s hands, he isn’t going to give into his apparent impulse to bury his unwanted guests in his back garden.

Carefully, glancing at Olly’s damp face, Sinclair leans forward.

“I’m not looking to spill any blood,” he says. “I’m trying to get my friend to safety. He’s been caught in a crossfire he didn’t sign up for, just like yourself.”

Schevner tilts his head, smoothing a hand over a receding hairline that’s waxed off his face into a shiny helmet. There’s a tiny smirk playing on his lips, which is either very much in Sinclair’s favour, or entirely against him.

He gives another tiny tip of his shoulders.

“All I want to do is leave Belarus, get my friend to a hospital, go home to my girlfriend and have a fifth of Scotch. Is that too much to ask?”

This last, he says with a wry, nonchalant grin.

Schevner’s hand lifts up from his hip, just high enough that his thumb brushes the magazine of his gun.

Sinclair holds his breath in his clenched jaw; he can hear the labour of Olly’s lungs and his own blood in his ears. Then Schevner sighs, moving to a dresser across the room before pulling out a bottle of clear liquid and two glasses

“I don’t have Scotch,” he says, pouring two incredibly generous measures from the bottle. “But in my experience, there is some honour among thieves.”

He carries both glasses to Sinclair, handing him one and draining the other in a single gulp.

Sinclair lifts the glass in a grateful, apprehensive cheer, before drinking almost all of the powerful, burning vodka in one gulp. It blooms in his throat, and he coughs, overwhelmed as the last few drops spill out from between his mouth and the glass into his lap.

Schevner smiles coolly, standing just shy of too close.

Then, in an even more fluidly practiced move than finishing his drunk, Schevner pulls his gun from his holster, unclicks the safety and shoots Olly twice in the chest.

_Bang! Bang!_

A sound barrels out of Sinclair, or maybe Olly. The glass smashes on the floor and he tries to reach out to the boy but it’s pointless, Olly chokes in a wretched convulsion once, twice, and lies still, the choppy heaving of his breathing no longer shredding the room.

Schevner re-holsters his gun, moving back to the dresser to pour himself another vodka, which he drinks in a single, loud gulp.

Sinclair stares at Olly’s slack face, his half-open eyes and slumped, puffy mouth.

He can feel the sting of shock in the back of his throat.

Schevner’s still got the gun in his hand, is tapping it lightly against his leg. Sinclair holds very still, sitting duck in an unlocked room.

“Whoever you are for,” Schevner says, without looking away from his drink. “Zumani, his buyer. Your girlfriend. I want you to know that Minsk is closed for business. If I see another PASIV in this city again, whoever is attached to it will be crucified and left to the crows.”

He helps himself to a third drink, waves his gun barrel at Sinclair and walks to the door without glancing at the corpse in the bed.

“Ben will drive you to the train station. Perhaps you will be at home, drinking your Scotch and fucking your girlfriend, before the sun has set.”

With that, Hugo Schevner walks out of the room, the door left open wide.

Sinclair can feel his guts trembling, and he slides on weak knees off his seat and to the bed, to take hold of one of Olly’s clammy hands.

The smell of thick, sour blood is strong, but it hasn’t stained through yet, and but for two dart holes in the covers, he might be unharmed.

“I’m sorry,” he says, just once, very quietly.

Olly looks like a little boy, white slits of his eyes between his lashes and red inside his mouth. A part of Sinclair wants to smooth back his hair, press his hand to his forehead. He can’t bring himself to do it.

Sinclair can’t shake the tiny, whimpering _Please_ he’d uttered back in the hotel room, and his terrible resignation, _Helen’s dead, isn’t she?_

He hopes she is, now. He hopes there isn’t some bright young thing back in Manchester waiting for Olly to come home, wondering where he is or why he’s gone, if he left because he wanted to, if he stayed away because he found something better. He hopes Helen’s dead, hopes Schevner won’t stick Olly’s head on a pike in warning to the other pirates that some scouring.

Sinclair looks up at the clock on the wall, its antique hands. He should have been gone hours ago.

He stands up and walks to the door without looking back, and ever step burns like a bullet through his lungs.

.

.

_“You’re a fucking moron, Eames, and you know it.”_

“Excuse me?” Eames squawks, and very nearly puts the phone down. “You don’t know the half of what’s happened.”

 _“I know enough,”_ Yusuf replies in a distracted voice. There’s a lot of noise on his end of the line, the tapping and clattering of a busy lab and a busier chemist.

In Portugal, the birds are sharing their opinions and an undesirable volume and the cicadas are doing their best to compete. The garden, blooming, crawling with insects. Another bottle of wine has disappeared from the fridge.

“You most certainly don’t,” Eames grumbles.

 _“Where’s Arthur now?”_ Yusuf asks.

“He’s fucked off, hasn’t he?” Eames snaps. He didn’t call Yusuf for a lecture, he called because he’s running out of everything including viable identities and he made a bad habit of leaning on Yusuf years ago, something Yusuf has been loath to let him forget.

_“You mean you sent him away?”_

Sometimes, Eames really hates other people knowing his business.

“What was I supposed to do? He’s still going to help the cunt who tried to have me executed. _Executed,_ Yusuf! What would you expect me to do?”

 _“Oh, I don’t know,”_ Yusuf gasps in a loud, lengthy vowel display of sarcasm that is most unwelcome. _“Maybe do something radical, utterly novel, like help the man who cared so much about you, he jumped headfirst into Limbo to save your life?”_

Eames prods at his empty glass, nudging it closer to the edge of the table and scowling.

The garden’s cooled down. It’s definitely the lack of proper sunlight that’s leaving a hollow tree chill in Eames’ chest, and not Arthur’s absence.

“That can’t be his get out of jail free card forever, you know,” he retorts grumpily.

Yusuf laughs.

_“Are you sure? The boy nearly killed himself for you. And you said it yourself, it’s not surprising Arthur would help this Captain Ezra chap if he asked for it. You can’t be angry at Arthur for being himself, you twat.”_

Eames stabs his glass hard with his finger and it shoots off the table in a toppling motion, smashing on the ground with an incredibly satisfying sound.

 _“Did you just throw something?”_ Yusuf asks shrewdly.

“No,” Eames replies hastily, still staring at the glittering dusting of glass on the patio tiles. “And I’m not angry at Arthur for being himself. I’m angry at him for lying to me about it.”

 _“Sounds like two sides of a very thin coin to me,”_ Yusuf scoffs, _“I’m hardly an expert, but Arthur seems to do what he has to, to protect the incredibly few people he loves. Speaking of which, Dominick Cobb is looking for you. I assume because he’s looking for Arthur. I gave him your Montpellier drop address.”_

Christ, that’s the last thing Eames needs; Dom bloody Cobb sniffing around.

He reaches down to pick up the biggest glass shard glinting twilight blue in the waning evening; traces the fine edges just shy of slicing his finger.

He thinks about the devastated look on Arthur’s face, the way he held his breath as he left, even tighter than when he’d arrived. _Who did it?_ He’d asked, like he was going to turn around and hunt them down that very second.

“Arthur’s probably on his way to Cobb now, might as well leave them to it,” he says with a false shrug that he’s glad Yusuf can’t see and call him out on. “He’ll need someone else’s help other than bloody Ariadne. I mean, _Ariadne._ She’s a good architect but she’s about the greenest person I’ve ever met in my life. He shouldn’t be dragging her into this mess any more than necessary.”

The truth is, he quite likes how daisy fresh Ariadne is. It’s refreshing, the lack of real cynicism in her, even four years after being introduced to the world of dream thievery.

 _“He shouldn’t need either of them,”_ is all Yusuf can think to say, apparently. It’s pointed, a sharp jab as clean and clear as the triangle of glass in Eames’ hands.

There’s a pause, full of each other’s bitter frustration, before a crash interrupts, this time on Yusuf’s end, followed by Yusuf hissing curses.

 _“Eames,”_ he finally elaborates. _“I can’t make you pull your head out of your arse. God knows it’s been wedged up there a long time now.”_

Eames chuckles despite himself, and only withholds his lewd comments on account of Yusuf ploughing on before he has a chance to voice them.

_“But it’s obvious you’re only this upset because you didn’t actually want Arthur to go. So, I suggest you buck up and get a flight out now, before the idiot beats himself up anymore. Where is it you need to go?”_

“Oregon,” Eames says, trying not to sound too disdainful, although it’s so far west he can feel the distant Leon berating him like he’s at his side.

Yusuf lets out a despairing, self-flagellating groan.

 _“I’ll get you out there,”_ he says in the same voice he might have said, _Why yes, I shall wipe your arse for you. “You can owe me a job. Alright?”_

“Don’t say this like you’re doing me a favour, Yusuf,” Eames mutters darkly. “I don’t actually –”

 _“Of course I am, Eames,”_ Yusuf snaps, sounding for the first time quite impatient. _“What else do you call rescuing you from your own shoddy relationship skills?”_

Eames doesn’t exactly have a reply to this.

He circles the edges of glass with his thumb. The night is bruising the sky above him, the stars coming through in scattered pinpricks of white gold.

The truth is, there’s nowhere he’d rather be less than a hundred miles within David Ezra’s presence.

Yet, despite whatever he’d let Arthur think a few hours ago, there’s still nowhere he’d rather be than within reach of Arthur. It’s still the safest, warmest place Eames knows.

“Fine,” he says. “Yes. Alright. I’ll owe you a job. Only a small one, though.”

Yusuf makes a trilling, peacock sound of pleasure, no doubt terribly pleased with himself.

 _“Gasira will be thrilled,”_ he says, as if that’s all he cares about.

“Does your wife know about your burgeoning career as cupid?” Eames asks only a little waspishly.

Yusuf merely chortles, brushing away any resentment lingering in Eames’ tone.

_“No, but she is terribly invested in your relationship, you know.”_

_So am I,_ Eames wants to snarl back, but he doesn’t, because he doesn’t want to give Yusuf the satisfaction.

“Tell her she can plan the wedding,” he teases instead, still sharp as the glass biting into the tip of his finger as he presses at it.

 _“What on earth are you talking about?”_ Yusuf splutters. _“She’s already planned it, you moron. Why else do you think she keeps sending you cake recipes with your somnacin?”_

“Goodbye, Yusuf,” Eames says bluntly, putting the phone down before Yusuf can protest.

He tries his best to resist, but he can feel the tugging corners of his lips curling, either up or down, he can’t quite tell.

And he tries his best to resist, but there in the back of his mind, Arthur, sunlight in a thunderstorm, the lighthouse on the distant coast,

 _Come back with me?_ He asked, and Eames followed, because he couldn’t not.

He thinks, quite possibly, he will follow Arthur into the abyss.

.

.

“You’re safe,” the nurse says. “You’re in the hospital.”

Ariadne blinks heavily, tasting medicine on her tongue like blood.

She swivels her eyes to the side, head braced to her pillow and the pounding of nails in her skull.

Olivier is in the next bed over, her face puffy and closed up like a trapdoor. Her hand is cuffed to the bed rail and when Ariadne looks slowly down to her own hands, she realises that she’s cuffed, too.

She opens her dry, sickly rough mouth, but no words come.

The nurse is still speaking.

Ariadne closes her eyes and drifts, tide-like, back into the chasm of unconsciousness.

.

.


	10. Interlude: Ariadne

.

.

Ariadne Collins never really understood her father’s long lectures on how to survive bad falls and car crashes.

 _Go floppy,_ he’d say, _Don’t tense._

He’d throw in these little jewels of advice amidst grand rants about drunk drivers and cocky teenagers.

Of course, she _understood,_ as it were. She was aware of the science behind it.

What she never got to grips with was how she was ever supposed to have the mental capacity to remember this, or even the basic instinct to implement it, in the event of a car crash, in which she’d have precious milliseconds between impact one and impact two to react.

She’ll never forget the buffeting storm of Limbo, the rush of air as she let her limbs go loose, toppling through the sky in search of a kick that might not have come.

She’d closed her eyes in the strike of lightning and remembered her father’s voice; his deep, reassuring belief that he could will his children into safety just by telling them the same things over and over.

 _Don’t tense_ and _Give them your money and phone_ and _Shout fire_ and _Always book a cab in advance._

And, of course, _We love you so much, just be careful, be safe and come home to us._

She had closed her eyes, the wrath of Mallorie Cobb still ringing in the whip of the air about her, and she heard her father saying, _Don’t tense._

Four years later, in a Chevrolet Malibu, sitting hostage next to her reluctant, redheaded captor, Ariadne tenses hard.

There’s a screech of wheels, the battering ram of a truck that sends them rolling off the road. She’s too shocked to be terrified, too terrified to feel the pain, there’s too much pain to feel shocked.

They roll, the car is crippled, and she can feel consciousness like a hand on the back of her head, cradling her and pinching her.

Olivier gasping and retching, the shout of another driver, and another.

_Call an ambulance!_

_Call the police!_

_Call the fire service!_

She thinks she’s crying, thinks that wounded whimper she can hear is dripping out of her own mouth with the blood and the bile. She’s never broken her ribs before, but she thinks this might be what it feels like.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers to her dad, his hands on her brow, murmuring _Don’t move, let it heal. You are so, so brave._

Blue lights in the sky, through the crack-crunch metal of the car.

 _“What’s your name, Miss?”_ a paramedic asks, and Ariadne remembers how she used to tell her parents,

_I’m going to change my stupid name when I’m a grown up. I’m going to be a Lucy. I’m not going to have a stupid, made-up name. I’m Lucy, I’m Lucy I’m Lucy._

Olivier next to her, red in her eyes, blood and hair.

 _“You’re doing great, Miss,”_ a firefighter tells her, and his eyes are very blue, with little sunlight flecks around the pupils in a sunflower fan.

She can breathe again, breathe air and fumes and drink in the sirens wailing.

She sinks back into her mind, where it is quiet.

Where her father tells her, _Just be safe,_ and her mother is tapping on the window at the cat; where her sister is singing incorrect Beatles lyrics and her brother is playing tennis in the garden too close to the house again.

.

.

When she landed in LAX, and Dominick Cobb cleared customs a free man, Ariadne looked at the men she’d come close to dying-not-dying with.

Yusuf, frazzled and jovial, on the phone with someone already, laughing a shrill laugh and saying, _“A bit of turbulence, nothing to worry about, my little dove.”_

Eames, staring at the baggage claim belt like he was still waiting for something more, even though his case was at his feet.

Arthur, his eyes on Cobb’s retreating back, staring past all the other passengers with anxious, war-torn eyes that were much sadder than Ariadne had realised before that moment.

When she landed in LAX, Ariadne looked up to see Mr Saito with something close to a smile on his face and guilt squirmed itself into her stomach.

Only, Mr Fischer also had a very faint smile pulling at his mouth as he walked past. He looked peaceful, gentle, and Ariadne thought, just maybe, they’d done right by more than just Cobb, and just Saito, and she felt suddenly much lighter.

When she landed in LAX, Ariadne called her sister.

 _“Ariad?”_ her sister asked when she answered the phone and Ariadne promptly burst into tears.

“I miss you so much,” she said. “I’m in California. Can I come see you?”

 _“Of course you can, Addy,”_ her sister said with a blossom of sympathetic laughter. _“Do you need money for a ticket?”_

It was Ariadne’s turn to laugh, then.

“I can afford it,” she replied.

Her sister, the righteous, royal Athena, didn’t believe her, of course.

 _“I’m booking it right now,”_ Athena said. _“Just hold on. Where are you? I’ll see you very soon. I love you.”_

She always said it best.

.

.

After the crash, she must get air-ambulanced out, but she doesn’t remember.

She must get told she’s _safe,_ and _ok,_ and _gonna be fine_ a hundred times, but she doesn’t remember.

They must find Olivier’s gun, and the passports, and they must have found a discrepancy somewhere to make them suspect something, but she doesn’t remember.

All she knows if that someone smashed into their car on purpose and when she wakes up, she’s handcuffed to her hospital bed and there are armed men outside the hospital room door.

.

.

There’s a nurse; her name is McLaren. She has a cluster of freckles at the corner of her mouth, like a firework set into in her olive skin. She has coarse black hair tied up high in a knot on her head, and she has the faintest lilt in her voice, like an accent three generations old, half-forgotten.

 _When in doubt, play dumb,_ Arthur shrugged at her, once, years ago. It hadn’t worked with Olivier, but it’s her only play.

“I don’t…I don’t remember, I don’t know,” Ariadne says cautiously, and McLaren is horribly kind about it.

“You took a nasty hit to the head,” she says gently. “Don’t fret. Just rest.”

Ariadne can’t argue with that.

Her head is fuzzy from the painkillers but even they aren’t enough to fully cushion the stabbing pains behind her eyes. Her neck is still braced, but they tell her it’s just a precaution, there doesn’t seem to be any spinal damage.

Beside her, Olivier is still unconscious.

“She’s sleeping,” McLaren assures her. “She woke up a few hours ago, you keep missing each other.”

Except, maybe McLaren is just soothing her patient. Maybe Olivier hasn’t woken up. Maybe she’ll never wake up again.

Ariadne tries to look at her; the effort is blinding. Tears of pain and frustration roll down her temples into her hair and she thinks about Robert, her Sinclair, who isn’t really hers at all yet.

Will he know she’s missing? Will he look for her, when he does?

She licks her lips, tries to mumble out in the correct order a coherent question; tries to ask, _How long have I been here?_

McLaren is busy with Olivier’s saline drip, though, and Ariadne’s tongue is stuck to the roof of her mouth.

She can see through the long vertical window in the door, the arm of one of the officers standing guard.

She wonders what they’re going to be charged with.

It’s tricky to convict a dream thief; she hasn’t even done anything wrong this time, other than carry a fake passport. Even then, she’s not entirely convinced they know it’s fake. Eames’ documents haven’t failed her yet.

The hospital room door opens, and a man enters.

He’s tall and lean, with bristly salt-speckled hair, and he moves with a loping limp, one leg far more reluctant to part with the floor than the other.

He has eyes only for the nurse, placing a hand on McLaren’s shoulder that even from her unhelpful angle Ariadne can see displeases the nurse.

“I need a moment,” the man says, and his voice is pleasant enough, if a little harsh. All the same, it’s the confidence of it, the authority in his curt demand, that sends a prickling of spiders all across Ariadne’s sluggish limbs.

 _No,_ she wants to say. _Don’t give him it, not even a moment._

“This one isn’t even conscious,” McLaren says. “What will you do, get her to sleep talk?”

It’s funny and tragic for all kinds of reasons and Ariadne could kiss her for it.

The man doesn’t find her amusing, however, and he immediately takes tighter hold of McLaren’s arm, pulling her to the door.

“You can attend to your dear patients soon,” he says, brisker this time, and Ariadne only just catches McLaren wrenching her arm out of the man’s grip before the door is shut.

The man is still there, and Olivier is still asleep.

Ariadne’s pulse is throbbing loudly in her throat. She swallows, tries to unglue her teeth that are clenched tightly together.

The man moves to Olivier first, stands staring down at her with starving crow eyes that make the spiders in Ariadne’s bed twitch.

Then he looks at Ariadne, and his smile bites frost into her bone marrow.

“So,” he says tartly, drawing up a chair and pouring a cup of water from a jug on the side. He pops a green bendy straw in and holds it to Ariadne’s mouth.

When she refuses, he raises his eyebrows as if to scold her pettiness, and she loathes how chastised she feels. She opens her mouth and takes a few sips, feeling reluctantly better as the fuzz on her tongue clears.

“Better?” the man asks, and grins when all Ariadne does is blink stubbornly. “Don’t worry, I’ve learned not to expect gratitude from the likes of you.”

He sits so easy in his seat, puts down the water glass and clasps his hands on his knee. There’s a tattoo on his wrist that Ariadne can’t quite make out.

“My name is Lucas Aldman. And you don’t look like a Dominick, so I am going to take a wild stab in the dark and say that you must be Ariadne.”

He’s barely looking at her, seems to prefer the wall above her head. Ariadne blinks, and another warm, ticklish tear drops from her eyelashes into her hair.

Behind the man, this Aldman, Olivier turns her head. Her eyes are still closed and she’s too far away for Ariadne to tell if she’s still sleeping.

“That, is Sophie. Or Stacey, or Olivier,” Aldman says, gesturing to the other bed. “Do you know what she is?”

 _Yes,_ Ariadne wants to say, if only to swipe his smirk clean off his face. Except, she doesn’t and Aldman knows it.

She knows her name and her face, that she’s a good shot and a friend of Arthur’s, of Eames’, and all of these things she only knows because Sophie, Stacey, Olivier told her.

“She’s a Canterbury Thief. She’s an SAS turncoat who abandoned her post and killed a lot of innocent people. She took the gift of her PASIV and she used it to torture her victims into insanity. Her and her friends, Andrew and Pauline and Harry and Rupert.”

These names are meaningless to her, as meaningless as all the rest of his words. Ariadne can feel the fly catch of her throat, and the burn of Lucas Aldman’s eyes hungrily taking in her hurt.

Something is familiar in his words but she doesn’t know what or who or why.

Aldman reaches into his pocket and pulls out several pieces of paper, crumpled and re-smoothed into creased A4 sheets. He holds out one, the words blurring into nothing before her eyes.

“This, is the plane ticket she was going to give you, that would take you far, far away from here, where you might not be found so easily.”

Ariadne tries not to look.

She tries to bend her fingers and her toes instead, but her body is floating cotton-boned in the air. She can’t breathe it in and she can’t extract herself from its grip.

Aldman is unimpressed, almost disappointed, perhaps that Olivier tried at all, or perhaps that she didn’t try harder.

Ariadne can taste the greasy diner smell where Olivier cornered her, the sad spring eyes in her freckly face.

_They think I did it, and now they want me to do another one._

She tries to push these thoughts together, to snap them into place like jigsaw pieces but instead like magnet ends they repel and revolt.

 _He thinks I did it,_ she said, but also, _They’re in terrible danger._

Who was in danger? She can’t remember. Olivier, or Cobb, maybe herself.

She certainly feels in danger, now.

She pulls and there’s the clink of handcuffs on plastic, the scrape of it in her skin.

She is in danger, and she is frightened. She closes her eyes and feels a hand click loudly in front of her face and she sees Sinclair, her Sinclair, his face close to her own, kissing close, his crystalline cheer.

Her throat aches, thorns in flesh tugging, and as she sinks out from under that clicking in her ear, she hears it. His voice, her Robert, whispering kisses,

_Some people think he’s one of the Canterbury Thieves._

.

.

Across the Atlantic, a plane climbs into the sky, engines guzzling.

On it, a pilot thinking if only his wife was as easy to understand as his airplane; an air stewardess thinking about the christening she’s missing because of this pain in the ass job.

A dream thief thinking about the chimera he’s built of his lies; how it might swallow him whole before the season turns.

.

.

It took time for her to return to dreams, once the dust of the Fischer Job settled.

She stayed with Athena for almost two weeks, and it was another four months before she called the number that was written on the back of a receipt and slipped into her pocket in LAX.

She recognised Arthur’s handwriting, and got a serious shock when Eames picked up.

“Are you with Arthur?” she asked a little boldly and when Eames laughed, it was brambly, uncomfortable.

 _“No,”_ he said, and she couldn’t tell if it was genuine sadness or not that stuck in his voice. _“I just don’t like using my own handwriting when I can help it.”_

Ariadne laughed, and that was something she could believe.

 _“You ready for a job yet?”_ Eames asked knowingly. _“Run out of money already?”_

“No,” she laughed. “I mean, yes. But I haven’t run out of money. I thought you were kidding about the gambling.”

 _“It’s a sickness,”_ Eames sighed jovially. _“I’ll make a few calls. Do you need to stick to Europe?”_

It was something to think about, she realised. _Did_ she?

Probably. She might have had a sympathetic ear in Professor Miles, but she still had studies to think of.

“Nothing too big,” she replied.

 _“Just a little hit to take the edge off,”_ Eames agreed like a true addict. _“Leave it with me, I’ll find you something.”_

He bade her goodnight and put down the phone before she could bid him good morning in return.

The coffee in her cafetière had brewed by then, and she poured it slowly, inhaling its fumes.

He met her in Munich four weeks later.

Arthur was there, too. He’d lost weight he couldn’t really spare, and Eames looked tired, far less tanned than he had in Paris.

They still bickered playfully, like they did on the Fischer Job.

Except for that morning, when Ariadne arrived at the warehouse early and heard the yelling. Turned on her heel and came back an hour later to festering stones of silence.

.

.

 _I told you what you wanted to know,_ Arthur had said to her in Paris. _Please don’t ask for more._

.

.

When Ariadne remembers she’s awake, there are voices in the room.

A man’s, and a woman’s.

It’s a hush-whoosh of arguing, his voice sharp and snarled; hers long, lazy rasps.

“You think you’ve got Hadley and Hewitt tucked away nicely, don’t you?”

Already she can feel Aldman’s voice burned into her memory. He sounds angrier now than he had with her…yesterday? Last week? An hour ago?

She hasn’t a clue.

He doesn’t hold that same coldness well. It’s heating up with his impatience.

“Oh,” Olivier’s voice says, groaning pillow soft, proud. “Did Zumani not live up to your expectations?”

“I hardly expected him to succeed,” Aldman hisses, too quickly to be entirely genuine.

Olivier must hear it, too, or see it, because she chuckles weakly and says,

“Liar.”

Ariadne tries to peer through her eyelashes, but the light of the hospital room is harsh and she has to shut them again to avoid detection. She tries to scope out the state of her body.

Her limbs are a little less heavy and a lot more painful. She feels like one large bruise, covering up the splinters of her joints.

She daren’t move too much, turning instead into the voices across the room.

“I should get rid of you once and for all,” Aldman is saying. “They’d give me a medal for public service.”

For some reason, this amuses Olivier. She laughs, though it’s a brittle, brandysnap sound, likely to shatter if scrutinised.

“Probably,” she says. “Of course, then they’d know what you were up to, and you’d be arrested. Still, I’m sure the medal would win you a few packs of cigs in the clanger.”

This, evidently, is where the game ends for Aldman. Ariadne can’t stifle the flinch she gives when a chair scrapes loudly across the floor.

“You can’t hide them forever,” Aldman says, and his voice is louder, maybe closer.

Ariadne tries to maintain her steady, gentle breathing through the twinges in her ribcage. Olivier remains cliff-edge calm, almost like a mother talking down a squealing child as she says,

“It’s been twelve years. You never even guessed Hewitt was alive. Neither of them. Why now?”

“You know why.”

Aldman’s voice is sly, dark with something hungry, predatory.

Olivier makes a sharp, gasping sound of air, an intake of breath, or an exorcism.

“You aren’t after inception,” she says, but it’s not said with certainty; there’s nothing brave in her sneer. “You never wanted inception, you wanted mind control.”

Surprised, Ariadne tries to file that away in her memory, where it might be examined in greater detail at another time. There’s no time at all, though, before Aldman is leaping to his own defence.

“It’s an easily built bridge.”

“You can learn everything about the mechanics of the PASIV. It won’t help you understand the mind.”

Olivier sounds terribly sad, then. It sounds very much like a lesson she has learned and taught a hundred times.

Ariadne turns her head ever so slightly and realises for the first time that she _can._ She’s no longer restrained to her spine-tight brace.

“That’s why I have you,” Aldman continues, oblivious to Ariadne’s revelation.

She tries, very slowly, to open her eyes a fraction.

“I’ve never incepted anyone,” Olivier is saying, harsh, a little frantic; her vowels tremble, encased in their soft consonants. “I told you. And she can’t do it alone, not like this. Do you understand? She can’t do it.”

“Are you saying I have no use for her?” Aldman teases, so cold Ariadne feels the specks of ice in her lungs.

She holds her breath, the light piercing through the fans of her breath, the light piercing through the fans of her lashes as Olivier says, louder.

“No! I –” but she too catches on her own breath.

Through her peering lids, Ariadne can make out the shape of Aldman, standing tall over Olivier’s bed, reaching out to her face.

Olivier tries to pull back, but there’s nowhere for her to go, and Aldman’s hand skims her cheek, brushing aside a lock of her red hair.

“Don’t cry, sweetheart,” he says cruelly, tenderly.

Olivier mutters something, then, far too quietly for Ariadne to catch it. Aldman, seemingly satisfied, reaches back for his tossed aside chair and reclaims his seat as Olivier’s bedside vigil.

“Yes, I did,” he says in answer to Olivier’s whimper.

He crosses his bad leg over his good one with the help of his hands, leaving them clasped gracefully in his lap. He has a handsome profile, lean and fox-like.

 When he smiles, he has small dimples as he says,

“But now I have you, and I have her. For criminals, they do have such bleeding hearts.”

He sounds positively repulsed by this. Ariadne tries to get a proper look at Olivier, half-hidden by her curtain of copper. Her shoulders jerk, head turned away and it briefly looks like she’s sobbing quietly to herself.

Until, that is, Ariadne hears the dry laughter in her voice.

Aldman leans towards her, lion to lamb.

“What?” he asks, and Ariadne realises in that moment that this is a man who does not often ask questions.

Olivier looks up and her face is bloody under her skin, indigo green, black rings around her eyes, one still puffy and shut.

“He’s going to tear you apart, you know. He’s going to shred you like I never could.”

Aldman leans away, scoffing loudly.

“Hadley?” he sneers.

Olivier laughs, flash of white and pink in her mouth.

“Hewitt,” she corrects him. “You have no idea the mistake you made, making an enemy of him.”

Ariadne closes her eyes again, the image of Olivier’s painful amusement lingering like stars in her retinas. She thinks Aldman might say something, but it’s covered up by the squeak of his chair as he gets up. His uneven gait scrapes heavily over the floor, and Ariadne stays perfectly still.

She tries to pull to her mind Olivier’s exact words, her coldness and her pain.

_He’s going to tear you apart._

_Hadley?_

_Hewitt._

Ariadne doesn’t recognise either name, but even through the fog of the uninformed, she’s sure at least one of them is Arthur.

She tries to unpack the information she’s been assaulted with, but it’s difficult, and she doesn’t at all like half of what she thinks she’s understood.

 _Mind control._ What a horrid, horrid term; a gross violation that, honestly, she hadn’t really considered possible even with a PASIV. Changing a single idea in one man’s mind had been so complex, she doubts anyone could genuinely be brainwashed effectively that way.

Then again, she doubts that’s stopped people from trying.

 _Someone’s asking about the Fischer Job,_ Cobb had said in that voicemail, and it seems an age ago now. Sinclair with a baguette under his arm and bruises on his ribs, taking her for brunch and kissing her goodnight.

She’s interrupted, then, by Olivier’s voice, startling crack, like a split in dry sand.

“It’s alright, you know,” she says.

Tentatively, Ariadne unpeels her eyelids, blinking through the sharpness of the strip lights above them.

Olivier is looking at her, hangdog hollow.

“You’re his leverage,” she says in an oddly kind voice. “He knows better than to hurt you.”

Ariadne’s mouth twitches at that, can’t help but glance down herself as if to say, _You mean hurt me more._

Olivier inclines her head in due agreement. One of her arms is suspended in a cast, Ariadne only just realises; she looks as tired as Ariadne feels.

She suddenly remembers Aldman, waving that paper in her face.

“Were you really kidnapping me to hide me?” she asks.

Olivier blinks obtusely, revealing nothing, helped by the puffy blankness of her bruises.

“Why not just say that?” Ariadne asks as well, hoping for something, but all she gets is Olivier looking at the hospital door instead.

“I hadn’t decided what I was going to do yet,” she says coolly, and she must know how fake it sounds, that crass callousness. “It was an option.”

Ariadne can still remember the screech of Limbo, her tense limbs rushing to the ground. It comes to her sometimes, at the strangest of moments.

She laughs, and Olivier looks at her full of silent questions.

“I don’t know why I doubted you,” Ariadne chuckles hoarsely. “You’re definitely Eames’ friend.”

For some reason, that doesn’t make Olivier smile the way she thought it would.

.

.

When Aldman comes back, there’s a PASIV in his hands, and a look in his eye that Ariadne remembers.

Hunger, a starving and unnecessary greed.

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” Lucas Aldman says.

Ariadne bites the inside of her lip, and blood oozes viscous through her teeth.

.

.


	11. SEVEN

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FRIENDS,
> 
> I'm terribly sorry for the delay and rather brief update. I shall endeavour to get back in the swing of things. I hope everyone is having a charming January.
> 
> I hope some of you are still with me and will keep on enjoying this story//series. There's plenty more to come.
> 
> I'd apologise for how many twists and turns this journey is taking, but that would imply I'm planning to stop at some point. (I'm never going to stop, I can't help myself. At least it's still in chronological order?)
> 
> It would be great to know what you're thinking and feeling! I also have other stories. Please feel free to check them out.
> 
> Yours always  
> LRCx

.

.

Daylight is stripping the sky’s purple clouds, beams of gold splitting the sheets of violet, by the time Dom gets up.

The house is quiet, still. James has slept through the night, and Dom nearly cries when he realises.

He creeps quietly to the backdoor, coffee brewing in the cafetière, and stands in the open doorway. The air is crisp, tangy; promises of a hot day in the citric wind.

Dom shivers a little in his t-shirt and sweatpants, feet bare on the lip of the door.

Before he can find a jacket lying around that isn’t designed for ages twelve or under, his phone buzzes angrily on the kitchen worktop.

In his rush to answer it, he doesn’t think anything of the unknown number lighting up the screen.

“Hello?” he answers in a half-whisper, moving to the backdoor.

The voice that replies, curt and clean, nearly guts him.

_“I’m almost at your front door. Do not shoot me."_

Then, Arthur ends the call.

Dom’s heart is racing, caught in his throat. He might be sick.

Phone clutched in his hand, he blinks stupidly around the room, thoughts reeling.

Arthur?

Arthur, here. Arthur, here and _alive._

Arthur. Here.

There’s the tiny rattle of a key in the front door, and Dom jolts into action, scurrying to the hall just in time to see Arthur closing the door behind himself, a bag dropped at his feet.

They stand staring at each other for several heavy-drawn breaths, before Arthur, pasty and worn, awkwardly holds up the gold Yale key Dom keeps spare.

“The plant pot, Cobb,” Arthur murmurs with a long-suffering sigh, his eyebrows raised. “Really?”

Dom chuffs a near silent laugh, his eyes burning, and before he really knows what he’s doing, he’s dashed forward and gathered the younger man into a bone crushing hug.

He smells of airports and cologne and his sweater is winter-worthy thick. He feels thin and tight muscled and alive.

Arthur clearly doesn’t know what to do with Dom’s sudden display of affection. He stands stiffly in the embrace, arms trapped to his sides, while Dom takes a deep breath.

His confusion is probably justified. Dom’s pretty sure he hasn’t hugged Arthur since Mal’s funeral.

“Happy to see you, too, Dominick,” Arthur says, a click on the _ck_ in the back of his throat.

There’s wry amusement in his tone, and maybe it’s that, or maybe it’s the use of _Dominick,_ like when they first met, but Dom is full of dizzying rage and relief.

He pulls back, hands squeezing Arthur’s shoulders, and takes him in at a sweeping glance.

Remembering his children upstairs, he pulls Arthur through to the kitchen at the back of the house.

Arthur follows willingly enough, face creased and concerned, shadows under his eyes.

Standing at the backdoor again, the smell of coffee overpowering, Dom isn’t sure what he wanted to say to Arthur most, his thoughts a blur of everything he’s learned in the past few days. The phone calls, the whispers, and unanswered questions.

He thinks of Yusuf, his wry snooping and his tutting manner, and what comes out first is,

“Eames got dropped into _Limbo?”_

Then, the most curious thing happens.

Arthur’s face transforms. Gone is his polite, Arthurish curiosity, replaced by a stricken look of such horror, Dom can feel his panic like it’s his own.

“What?” Arthur gasps, hollowed out like a nutshell. “No, he didn’t – I just – oh.”

Realisation dawns on him, and he even laughs; his taut frame sinks like a sandcastle, and the moment passes.

“You meant _before.”_

Dom, disconcerted, unable to really comprehend the level of sheer terror he had just been presented with, nods.

Arthur, for his part, runs a tired hand over his face, giving the full cafetière across the kitchen a longing look.

In a fit of compassion, Dom pours them a mug each, his back turned to give Arthur a moment to compose himself.

By the time Dom turns around again, Arthur’s leaning easily against the counter, looking for all the world like he belongs there.

His arms are folded, and he’s staring at the fridge door, full of silly magnets, a couple of photos and a copy of Phillie’s last school report.

Arthur takes the offered cup gratefully, eyes flicking from Dom’s tufted hair to his bare feet and smiles a little.

“Domesticity suits you, Mr Cobb,” he says, not for the first time.

Dom just sips his coffee, eyeing Arthur with suspicion, before replying,

“I assume you’re here to inform me that you’re not dead?”

Arthur stares down at his coffee, his eyes briefly closing in what could be shame or dismissal, it’s hard to tell.

Dom feels a pang of betrayal in his gut.

“There wasn’t time,” Arthur says, and it might be a lie.

Dom snorts. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s caught Arthur in a lie, but it’s the first time he puts any real thought into calling him out on it.

“Seems like there hasn’t been much time to tell me anything, these days.”

Even coming out of his mouth the words taste petty but damnit, does Arthur not _realise_ what kind of thoughts have been swirling around in Dom’s head? The images that have kept him awake these past nights?

“Cobb?” Artur says, brow crinkled with reprimand. “You got out. You don’t _want_ to hear about any of that.”

“You’re still my friend,” Dom says, and he tries not to sound too possessive but it’s hard, because it’s entirely possible that he’s feeling possessive.

Perhaps it’s childish of him. That doesn’t exactly make it untrue.

Arthur nods, placating, unnaturally kind.

“I’m sorry I left you in the dark,” he says with frankness, and Lord if it doesn’t make Dom feel ten inches tall to be spoken to the way he speaks to Phillipa when she’s in a mood.

Arthur turns, then, gesturing to the veranda, either for the sake of fresh air or because he fears this conversation might get louder. Dom really, really hopes it’s the former option.

They exit together, to the soft laid wood, into the cool kiss of dawn, grey violet and rose clouds, sun-brushed in streaks of marmalade.

Dom follows, shivers crooked around his coffee cup, and together they sit on the patio chairs brought in under the porch cover. The metal seats are biting cold and Dom traps the tremor in his limbs as he leans back.

“I have to tell you something,” Arthur says.

It’s solemn, and Dom nods, bracing himself with all his readily prepared responses.

 _I know,_ he’ll say. _It’s ok._

He’ll tell Arthur: _I know, you don’t have to hide, not from me._

Only, Arthur doesn’t say _that._

Instead, Arthur takes a deep, steadying breath and says:

“I was in the military.”

Dom blinks, and the recalibration takes a moment to adjust.

“Oh,” he says, before his own silence can swallow him.

Then he sips his coffee and promptly chokes on it.

Arthur chuckles as he slaps his back, and Dom coughs into his fist, red-cheeked and eyes stinging.

“Dreamshare?” he asks with a croak.

Arthur’s answering smile is unhappy, and tugs at only half his face.

“Yeah,” he replies. “I escaped early on in the shutdown. Declared dead in a – fuck-up. Got a new identity and ended up in Norway, working as a PA for an import/export CEO.”

Dom laughs, partly at the mental image but also partly at the look of squirming embarrassment in Arthur’s face.

“How did you get sucked back in?”

Arthur shrugs, dismissive eyes on the far corner of the garden, and he looks briefly so uncomfortable, Dom almost retracts his question.

“Someone tried to extract from me,” Arthur replies before he can.

He gives a smug little smirk as he says it, which Dom can easily interpret.

“Bet you gave them quite the shock.”

The smirk opens into a laughing agreement.

“Took me about a minute of dreamtime to realise something was wrong,” he chuckles. “In the end, I gave them what they wanted and in exchange they gave me a job.”

“Holy shit, Arthur,” Dom says, then, with a frown of realisation. “Why are you telling me this now?”

Arthur takes another gulp of coffee, shifting uncomfortably.

“Cobb,” he says, that solemn sincerity returning to his eyes. “I want you to know, if I’d thought for a second that he’d ever find me, I’d never have agreed to help with the inception.”

The _inception?_ Dom frowns, trying to figure out the soft creases in Arthur’s brow, as he continues.

“My old Captain has reached out to me, asking for my help. While I was in Milwaukee, we were ambushed.”

“You think it’s connected.”

 Arthur nods grimly, his palm cupping the open top of his mug and his shoulders inching closer to his ears.

“He thinks the leader of our operation, guy called Aldman, is behind some issues he’s having. I think he’s right. I think he’s the one who's got hold of Stacey Farris and I think he’s the one asking about the inception.”

It’s always been difficult not to just automatically believe anything Arthur says. He speaks with a rigid kind of surety that few possess, a sense of knowingness that now that Cobb thinks about it, speaks volumes of his military training. It’s a wonder he’s never considered the possibility before.

He thinks, maybe, he could feel a bit offended Arthur’s not divulged this information sooner.

Only, Dom’s never been a master truth-teller himself. He doesn’t think now is the time to get on his high horse about keeping secrets.

He lives in a very fragile glass house, these days, and he’s learned not to throw too many stones.

He’s never heard the name Aldman, but that’s the way of dreamshare, even among those at the heart of its affairs. And Dom, he’s not been in the thick of it for a while now.

Arthur was right to call him out, of course. He _is_ out and honestly, if he thought he could get away with it, he wouldn’t want to know about any of this.

There is one thing, however, that occurs to Dom, sitting here on the veranda, clutching a cooling cup of coffee as the faint glow of the dawn bursts over them in speckles of golden green. He curls his chilly feet upwards and raises his eyebrows expectantly.

“Eames has a lot more experience with military extraction,” he says slowly. “Pretty sure he did the Yellerman jobs in DC. Wasn’t he a Sergeant or something?”

Arthur’s face, briefly troubled, creases into a genuine smile.

“True, true and false,” he says with a snicker, sipping his coffee. “He’s done a lot of military jobs, he did all three of the Yellerman jobs, and he was not a Sergeant. Nor is he a Duke, nor is he a fixer for the Mafia. He is, however, an expert at bullshit backstories.”

Dom shrugs one shoulder in casual indifference. He’d heard the Duke one, too, but the fixer was new. When would he even have the time?

The problem with dreamshare, Dom thinks, is that it thrives on intrigue, and more often than not intrigue makes people stupid.

“He’d probably still be more useful than me,” Dom points out without comment, and tries his very best not to sound at all resentful.

Arthur’s thumb is circling his mug.

As the sky brightens, the circles around his eyes seem to be getting darker. What had looked like a few hours short of sleep looks something closer to exhaustion, now, in his pinched and angular face.

“He’s laid up,” Arthur replies.

“What happened?”

Arthur rolls his eyes.

“Zumani tried to sell him out to Hugo Schevner.”

Dom laughs, because even _he_ knows the punchline to that joke.

“Didn’t he pay Schevner back?”

“Yeah,” Arthur says with a nodding grin. “But he’s not interested in a job while he’s got busted ribs, so I’m short on help. Ariadne will be there, she’s meeting us in Portland.”

There is no mistaking the flippantly determined _us_ in that sentence.

Dom takes a breath, reedy sharp in the back of his throat. Holds it like a spell in his lungs while he eyes the sleepless bruises under his old friend’s eyes.

He’s painfully aware of how rarely Arthur asks him for help. Not to mention the piping burn of his heart thrumming in his chest, still hammering into his ribs the realisation that he’s very _not dead._

“How long?”

Arthur’s shoulders move, not quite a shrug.

“As long as you can give me.”

And he doesn’t say it, he probably doesn’t even mean it, but Dom hears it anyway like the smash of broken glass.

_I gave you two years._

Dom nods. Even if he wanted one, he knows he wouldn’t have a choice.

“Of course. Whatever you need,” he replies.

Arthur’s dimples appear very faintly in his cheeks. That schoolboy, pre-grin look of happiness. He drains his coffee and makes a humming, pleased sound. Stares out across the garden at the scattered toys and the dewy grass.

Sometimes, when he maybe least knows it, Arthur reminds Dom of Mal more than anyone else, even his own children.

Or perhaps, it’s the tacit reminder of just how much Mal had adored him, and how deeply that adoration had been returned.

It doesn’t hurt to remember that, anymore.

Arthur drops his empty mug on the decking next to his feet, scrubbing his hands over his face and around to the back of his neck.

Which is when Dom shamelessly takes advantage of his distraction to ask, again,

“Eames was dropped into _Limbo?”_

Arthur laughs, this time, a weak sound, like a newborn lamb left out in the cold.

“Worst four days of my life,” he replies, and it’s the most astounding display of honesty Dom has ever heard.

Arthur meets his eye, and there’s something there, then. Candour like a mask over his sad, sorry dimples.

Dom opens his mouth, maybe to say something or to ask something, or perhaps nothing at all.

He is, however, interrupted by the patter of small feet over kitchen tiles behind them. A voice, shy and sleepy.

“Daddy, why is _– Uncle Arthur!”_

A bundle of pink limbs and blond hair launches itself through the open doorway, and Arthur barely has a chance to hold out his arms before he’s catching a thrilled and wriggling James Cobb into his lap.

“Hey, buddy, how’s it going?” Arthur asks, tousling the boy’s hair and squeezing him a crushing hug not entirely dissimilar to the one he was greeted with by the boy’s father.

James is talking at a hundred miles an hour, a blur of colourful sound like the cartoons he’d watch all day if he was allowed to, and Arthur is grinning.

He gives Dom the tiniest of nods over the boy’s head, like a little truth of its own. A confirmation; a secret in disguise.

It’s enough. It’s more than enough.

.

.

There is an apartment in Marseille, beloved and bruised.

For almost eleven years, it has collected dust and charcoal and paint splatters; crevices stuffed with discarded notes and sub-par forged documents. It has been redecorated four times, carpets and floorboards, wallpaper and plaster paint, an assortment of furniture the likes of which should never have been crammed up the winding steps of the block.

It has been listed under the name _Segal_ for twenty-eight years. For the past eleven, though, it has belonged to a nameless man.

This apartment in Marseille, so recently forsaken, glittering with broken glass, pungent with the rotten smell of the dead fridge-freezer.

The door opens with little force. Its value is non-existent, now that it’s been found out.

A man steps inside, recalcitrant and impatient.

His name is Leon. He is a chemist, and an extractor.

Leon is not his real name, but it is the one he chose, and it is the one he’ll answer to beyond the grave.

He stares around the apartment in Marseille, at the tattered signs of what was once domesticity, and he can’t help but think they had it coming.

“Fucksake, Eames,” he mutters, looking around at the cluttered mess left behind by whoever raided this place of homely worship.

Leon has known Eames for a long time.

The first Leon knew of Eames, he had taken one look at his file and said, _Shoot the fucker before blows our cover._

He maintains it was the right call, even if nobody else had listened to him.

The problem with Eames, see, Leon can’t help but think, is that he still thinks he’s going to find something for himself in this big, desolate world. He still thinks that place exists, where one day he’ll be happy.

More to the point, he’d honestly thought he’d find it in fucking _Marseille._

Leon has known Eames for a long time and has never really liked him all that much.

“Christ,” he snorts as he stands in the crumb-and-splatter kitchen, a gravesite of spitefully smashed plates, and he wonders if whoever took such pleasure in destroying this little slice of domestic heaven had paid attention to _what_ they were smashing up.

Eames hasn’t been living here by himself, that much is obvious. There are ripped up books littering the floor that not even an alias of Eames would be caught dead owning, and the colour the living room walls is too soft, too palatable.

Eames has been shacked up with someone, and Leon doesn’t need them to have holiday photos hanging on the walls to make a good guess.

To be honest, Leon likes Arthur more than he ever liked Eames. He’s sharp as glass shards and just as unfriendly, to be handled with caution and not approached lightly.

Leon stares about the apartment, trailing through grit and ruin with casual indifference. The sofa cushions in the living room are shredded, the mattress in the bedroom has been knifed apart, the mirror in the bathroom has been cracked into a thousand slices.

It’s kind of sad, really, and perhaps, just perhaps, Leon feels a twinge of sympathy for the shit-for-brains forger.

For a long while, Leon stands on the small balcony, sunshine pouring over his dark chestnut head as he stares at a ginger and white cat that’s sitting on a railing opposite him. Its tail is curling lazily over the edge of its perch, its squashed face looking mightily unimpressed, as if it knows Leon doesn’t belong there.

He’s still staring out the cat with a shrewd smirk when he hears the fumbling knock of someone pushing the front door open.

Adrenaline spikes through his spine like a syringe plunger, his gun is in his hand before he can pause for thought and he’s barrelling straight through the linen curtains at the intruder in a flurry of limbs.

There’s a shout of surprised rage, and even as he gasps, reaching out, he takes in a slender woman with thick dark blonde hair pulling out her own gun.

She dodges him, ducking below his shout and taking hold of his wrist to shove his gun out of her face before he can pull the trigger.

She’s fast, and his own momentum is on her side as in one fell swoop they tumble to the ground, rolling over the glass and cushion stuffing. She yells something in a fierce voice, French and full, and her leg hooks around his knee to wrench him sideways off her windpipe.

“Fuck you fuck,” he snarls, one hand slapping at her face even as she takes hold of his hair and yanks hard.

He tries desperately to bring his gun back within shooting range of her head, but she’s nearly slipped out of his grasp and with a twist of her hand his own spasms and he lets go of his gun.

“Arrête!” she grunts through the heel of his hand, as unwilling to fire the first shot as he is, and that’s when she shouts something quite unexpected.

Her knee finds his stomach, his hand slips off her mouth and she bellows into the slap-shackle air,

“Nicky!”

Leon’s rolls away from her like an oil spill, wheezing and wincing.

The woman lies on her back, breathing hard. There’s glass in her hair and her face is red from the grip of his hand; her breaths are coming heavy and ragged as she stares at him with a half-cocked grin, her gun hanging lazy in her loose grip.

“I know Nicky,” she says, and Leon hauls himself onto his knees, snatching back his own gun, only to let it hang uselessly at his side.

“How do you know that name?” Leon asks, because as far as he is aware, there are only three people alive in the world who know that name’s relevance to Eames, and Leon is one of them.

The woman grins, wiping bloody saliva from her lip and elbowing her way up into sitting. She brushes the smashed debris from her jacket and hair and thighs, looking terribly comfortable as she regains her bearings.

“My name is Sylvie Deniau,” the woman says.

She’s somewhere in her thirties, handsome and lean and littered with dark beauty spots; she’s got big brown eyes and a birth mark underneath her left ear.

“I don’t care,” he tells her truthfully, because he doesn’t want to know anything about her. What he wants to know, is why she knows the name Nicky.

Sylvie Deniau shrugs innocently, as if to say, _Your loss._

“You are Canterbury,” she says, then, and it is sheer instinct, ingrained into him by the high-strung, nerve-shredding fear of his own existence, that makes Leon do what he does next.

The word is lingering on Sylvie Deniau’s lips, her mouth is open, ready to explain, ready to be told and to be trusted, she’s wearing a half smile and she sits up tall and before he really knows what he’s doing, Leon lifts his gun, pulls back the slider with a great snap of sound, and shoots her in the head.

She drops like a rabbit, flopsy bunny on the battered floor, blood pooling out of her in a wonky halo, staining her hair.

Leon’s heart flutters in his heart, panic in his trembling hands.

Somewhere on the street outside, he hears shouting.

There’s no disguising the firing of a gun, not in a city like Marseille.

He’s gone before he can bring himself to look at her again, at her handsome face and her half-risen grin.

 _Nicky,_ she said, in a familiar voice, a knowing one.

And, _You are Canterbury._

He thinks about Eames, cosying himself up in Marseille with his fuckboy of a point man and his king size bed and his bookshelves; using aliases he _swore_ he’d torn up for good.

 _Shoot the fucker before he blows our cover,_ Leon said, the first time he saw Eames’ file.

He always maintained it was the right call, and lo and behold, it turns out Leon was right.

He’s going to fucking kill him.

.

.

Portland is damp and green and humid when David Ezra reaches its outskirts.

The car is running on fumes as he pulls into a hotel parking lot. It’s a modest three-star, not overly busy, with windows overlooking lush greenery that fills the city to the brim. Its bracketed by trees and accessed only by a single road, from which the cars will no doubt be heard at all hours.

After several minutes of sitting and quietly panicking, he clambers out of the vehicle, bringing with him his meagre luggage and clutching tightly in his hand his passport. His real passport.

It’s slippery in his sweaty grip, and he can barely muster the courage to walk jelly-legged through the front doors to the welcoming reception. Tinkering piano music can be heard from somewhere, and the easy chatter of voices in a dining room. It must be some kind of mealtime, but David Ezra will be damned if he knows which meal that might be.

He doesn’t know if this is some kind of test, had barely spoken for three minutes on the phone with Hewitt and even then, it was only for the damn kid to order him around like some kind of baby-faced drill sergeant.

Arthur. _Arthur._ Not Hewitt.

It shouldn’t be so hard, really. David might not be an agent anymore, but he spent long enough in undercover base stations to remember a thousand names for a single face.

It’s just _that_ face, too familiar, too oft-thought of over the years. A small chunk of David Ezra’s heart broke for that boy, out there in the sands of Kenya, and he never got it back.

The receptionist is a smartly dressed young man with a striped shirt and purple tie, who smiles warmly at David, wishing him a pleasant afternoon and quickly tapping away at a computer. His name tag reads _Mark M._

“Hi,” David says, aiming for ruffled and important instead of the queasy and illegal that he feels as he promptly lies through his teeth, “I spoke with your manager yesterday. A Mr Oliver Halliday. May I speak directly with him?”

Young Mark M. doesn’t seem disturbed by the request, but he does frown a little, a disappointed sort of look that speaks of lacking experience and youthful resentment.

“Certainly, sir,” he says, before scurrying through a side door and returning not a minute later followed by a portly man with a thick beard and piercing blue eyes.

“Thanks, Miller,” Mr Oliver Halliday says, brushing Mark M. away with a hand and saying, “Go find Ashley, will you? I’ve been meaning to speak to her all day.”

Mr Halliday wait until Mark M. has vanished back through the door before smiling delicately at David, extending a hand and saying far too politely,

“Good afternoon, Mr Ruskin.”

Panic seizes David, and he nearly snatches his offered passport back but too late, Halliday’s already taken it. David winces internally, holds his breath and is halfway through a direct and specific curse to Arthur’s eternal soul when Mr Halliday glances down at the photo, takes in the words, _MR DAVID JOHN EZRA,_ and promptly nods.

“Very well, Mr Ruskin. That all seems to be in order.”

He hands back the passport, taps away at Mark M.’s computer for a moment, then prints out a sheet of paper, which he folds tidily around a plastic keycard.

“Here you are, Mr Ruskin. Your room number is two-oh-seven. Second floor, as requested. The elevator is just to the left of those double doors.”

With that, Mr Oliver Halliday smiles a deep, indulgent smile and disappears back through his little side door, perhaps in search of Mark M. and the elusive Ashley.

David blinks down at his papers, and at his bastard passport, too.

“Fucking wizard,” he whispers, and sends a quick prayer for Arthur’s eternal soul in the hopes of counterbalancing whatever curses he may have sent his way.

He walks slowly to the double doors, past them and into the elevator, where he punches the bold _2_ and makes his way up to his room.

There are skills that David recognises in this _Arthur,_ like his hold on a pistol, and the leopard-like strength with which he can smother a man with a pillow.

There are other skills, though, that he does not know. Like bewitching a hotel manager into blatant fraud.

Whether it’s bribery or blackmail or some other barbaric force, David Ezra does not know it, nor does he know where a boy like Hewitt learned it.

Mostly, in all and perfect honesty, he never wants to find out.

.

.


	12. EIGHT

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friends,
> 
> Thank you a million times for sticking with me! Hopefully this is a sign of more regular updates? (I'll try not to jinx it.)
> 
> Note: _njiwa_ is Swahili for dove, however it is categorically not a typical term of endearment, so please don't take this as a language lesson in Swahili.
> 
> Your faithful friend,  
> LRCx

.

.

Ariadne wakes up slowly, eyelashes tacky and her mouth cotton count fuzzy. Beneath her, she can feel the purr of a car engine, the rippling smooth tread of old tyres on new road.

She’s lying across the backseat of a low-ceilinged car, the bench comfortably cushioned with new leather that clings in her nostrils. Tucking her elbows under herself, she lifts up, and her muscles twinge painfully from being locked in a cramped _S_ curl.

When she looks up at the driver’s seat, she can see Olivier’s red ponytail and the pale back of her neck, swan arch sleek.

“Feeling better?” Olivier asks in a tight, impatient voice.

Ariadne rubs at her gummy eyes with the heel of her hand, before pressing more insistently at the knotted muscles in her shoulders with strong fingers.

“Where are we?” she asks, peering over the backrest of the front seats to the endless stretch of highway through the windscreen.

“Nowhere important yet,” Olivier replies, a bite of dismissal in her voice.

From her recline along the seats, Ariadne can’t see her face in the rear-view mirror. She tries to shift up a little, only for pins and needles to start prickling painfully up her legs, and she winces loudly.

“You may as well get some more sleep, while you can,” Olivier warns her coolly, flicking the indicator as she overtakes three cars in a groaning stretch of road.

The vibrations of the engine make Ariadne’s numb legs tingle even more painfully, and she grimaces.

“I’ll pass.”

“Suit yourself,” Olivier mutters under her breath.

Ariadne pulls herself up further, just enough to slump against the window, her cheek pressed to the warm glass, and she spends a few easy minutes taking in the scenery. Past acres of barley fields, she can see the outline of a town in the distance, the glint of traffic.

The car smells of irregularly used air con and an old pine scent freshener. In the footwell closest to her, she can see her bag.

Idly curious, she reaches down and pulls it into her lap.

“Thanks,” she says to the back of Olivier’s head, and she means it. It’s an abrupt display of trust, especially if the older woman hasn’t taken anything out of it before giving it back.

Unzipping the bag, she finds a spare sweater and a full bottle of water on top, the seal intact. She quickly unscrews the cap and gulps down half of it, before reaching over and tapping the driver on the shoulder.

“Want some?”

Olivier takes it after a pause, eyeing Ariadne in the rear-view before taking a swig and handing it back.

“Ta,” she says, and the loose English vowel makes her think of Eames.

Holding the open bottle in one hand, the other resting on the strap of her bag, she watches Olivier’s hands on the steering wheel. They’re deft and strong, fingers drumming a consistent melody, and every movement is clean, second-nature, right down to the way she glances out of her window.

She’s lost some of that agitated energy she’s had since the diner. Perhaps it’s the act of driving, or the increasing reassurance that Ariadne isn’t going to kick up a fuss.

“Where are we going?” she asks, not for the first time, but for once she injects in the question a more casual, nonchalant feel, hoping it comes across that she might take or leave the answer.

“California,” Olivier replies coolly, as if it isn’t the third largest state in the country, not to mention on the other side of the continent from their starting place.

“Why?” Ariadne asks, genuinely curious.

“To get Eames,” Olivier explains, easy as _to pick up milk._

Ariadne frowns.

“That’s not where Eames is,” she says before she can trap the words behind her teeth.

In the mirror, she sees Olivier’s pale caramel eyebrows rise on her forehead in a silent _Oh? Do tell._

“Why do you want to find Eames?” she asks instead of responding.

If she leans over just so, she can see the side of Olivier’s face properly. There are lines bunching at the corner of her eye, and she fiddles with a pair of sunglasses on her head but doesn’t pull them down.

“I told you,” she says with shirty indifference, “He’s in trouble.”

She did say that. It’s concern for Eames and for Arthur that’s driven her to this.

As she watches, a car overtakes them; a gaudy red sports car that growls as it passes them, and Olivier flips them off frivolously, more out of apparent habit than care.

Ariadne lets out a careless puff of laughter.

“Are you hungry?” Olivier asks abruptly, before tapping on the indicator and making a lazy, slow turn into a gas station.

There’s a dehydrated car wash steaming out beyond the pumps. The dilapidated building has the cut corner, dusty face of desert aged weariness; creaky elbows and oil spills in the cracks of dry hands.

“Not really,” Ariadne replies, and Olivier makes a few more grumbling sounds as she pulls up next to a muck-stained pump and gets out, hot wind cutting through the briefly open door in a _swoosh_ of air.

Ariadne points and curls her toes, the feeling coming back into her legs with slow, syrupy warmth. She watches Olivier through the window; her coppery hair positively glowing in the scorching sunlight as it whips across her face and her freckles stark against her pale skin.

She’s twitchier no longer behind the wheel and she moves with flurried energy, like a breeze disturbing snow.

The minutes tick in a stuttering rhythm, and Ariadne finds herself thinking about Robert, and whether he’s found Eames yet. Surely they’ll be out of Minsk by now.

She doesn’t really understand what beef Robert and Arthur seem to have with each other, perhaps just the prideful clash of point men forced to work together, but she hopes Robert and Eames get along better.

It seemed like rather cheap bait, Olivier’s jibe about California, as if Ariadne would just blurt out any information for nothing more than spite and certainty. She feels wrong-footed the more she thinks about it.

Outside, Olivier replaces the pump and heads into the station shop to pay.

Ariadne takes the opportunity to glance through the windows at her surroundings, and over the seat backrest into the front of the car.

There’s nothing noteworthy to be found. At a stretch, she can pop open the glove compartment, but even then she finds nothing more than a plastic packet containing a single tissue, a crunched up pepsi can and a handful of battered CD cases, some Presley and Springsteen and one rogue Green Day album.

There’s undoubtedly a gun somewhere, probably under the driver’s seat, but there’s no way she could reach it in good time and in any case, Ariadne has no faith in her own ability to pull a gun on Olivier. For all her childish fidgeting and easy demeanour, Olivier is certifiably nothing less than a trained killer, and Ariadne knows better than to try ride her luck on a half-cocked impulse.

Even if she did catch her captor off-guard, where was she going to go?

She’s not even sure what state she’s in right now.

Before she can consider this in anything other than obscurity, the driver’s door opens again and Olivier swings back inside, eyeing the open glove compartment and throwing a smirk over her shoulder.

“Sorry to disappoint,” she says, sunny green eyes flashing.

“I’m not sure if you mean the lack of weapons or the music,” Ariadne retorts light-heartedly, “But you don’t have to apologise for the King _or_ the Boss.”

Olivier chuckles closed-mouthed, and she slaps the glove compartment down with a lazy flap of her hand.

“It’s not mine,” she says needlessly.

“Well I figured that much,” Ariadne replies toothily. “Don’t you all listen to The Beatles?”

Olivier rolls her eyes and doesn’t rise to it. Ariadne leans back against the window, which is heating up as the day progresses. It’s almost uncomfortable against her cheek, sense memory of road trips with her sister behind the wheel and her brother squawking, belligerent schoolboy in the back.

She finishes the last of the water, drops it into her bag and pushes the rucksack back into the footwell.

“Here,” Olivier says, tossing something over her shoulder.

It lands in Ariadne’s lap, a packet of Reese’s cups.

For some reason, that wrong-footed unease comes back as Ariadne picks it up, seizing her with alien, foghorn hands of alarm.

In the front, Olivier takes a swig from a new water bottle before turning over the engine and pulling out onto the highway once more. She doesn’t seem to notice Ariadne frowning at the packet in her hands.

She’s not sure why, but for some reason, she had expected to be given a granola bar, and the fact it’s anything else has thrown her.

She doesn’t even _like_ granola that much, so her disappointment feels closer to disorienting. She holds her quick little breaths in her throat, shallow in her chest like second-hand smoke.

Ariadne flips the Reese’s cups over and over in her hands, as if she can’t decide whether to eat them or not.

In her mind’s eyes, her face turned down to her snack and her toes wriggling to keep the numbness at bay, she recalls with sudden and terrible clarity sitting in the front seat of this very car, a box of granola bars in her lap and a bottle of water between her knees.

 _Well, what’s your real name?_ she had asked, pepper bitter and rankled.

 _Sophie McLoughlin,_ that’s her name. Ariadne knows it already. Her name is Sophie.

She looks up at Olivier; at her ponytail and a constellation of freckles on the side of her neck. Her fingers tapping out a drumbeat on the steering wheel.

 _We’ve done this already,_ Ariadne thinks to herself, like the sheer stinging sound of crystal the second after it breaks.

Underneath her, she can feel the engine of the car rumble just shy of too hard. Olivier shifts, acid eyes in the mirror, watchful, and Ariadne opens the Reese’s cups slowly.

She keeps looking out of the window and pretends not to feel the desperate itch in her fingers to reach down into her bag, where she knows she won’t find her totem.

The peanut butter is claggy in her mouth as she takes a bite, but at least it excuses her from speaking for a few minutes. It runs sickly down her throat, overly sweetened chocolate, and she stares out of the window at the fields they’re passing, scattered herds of cows grazing in the parched greenery.

Ariadne glances at Olivier, who is staring easily out of the windscreen, eyeing the road ahead, and for the first time, she wonders if it really is Olivier at all.

Carefully, breathing slowly through her nose as she licks the peanut butter from the back of her teeth, Ariadne returns her attention to the fields out of the window.

With utmost caution, clinging tightly to feathery wingtips of her control, she focuses all of her attention on the field they’re passing. The idle cows and the sun-battered fencing, choppy with nettles and bracken surrounding them. She looks at one cow in particular, brown coat, tail swishing.

Before her very eyes, she watches a sunflower sprout out of the ground beside it, rapidly blooming and flowering, almost as tall at the cow itself in the few seconds it takes for them to pass it by.

She doesn’t panic, not even when the car engine gives another of those shaky rumbles from below

Olivier, or whoever is wearing her face, doesn’t seem to notice that time, or at least doesn’t acknowledge it.

Ariadne’ eats another Reese’s cup, spoiled by the ashy aftertaste that comes despite her best efforts.

She’s not sure how long she’s been here, if she’s alone or if she’s already given the game away, but she knows for a fact she’s not in a car on a highway heading to California.

Her limbs twinge again, muscle memory cramps, and she tries not to remember too suddenly the plaster casts and the bandages, the motley crew bruises that are spangling over her real body.

She stares out of the window at the passing scenery, listening to those fingers drumming, the whistle of breath through teeth.

She’s dreaming. This is a dream.

The only problem is, she doesn’t know how deep she is, or whether the hospital have still got her sedated, which means only one thing.

Without a kick, she’s not waking up any time soon.

It’s hot as sin inside the car. She licks her lips, wiping a thick shine of sweat from her forehead and it comes away pasty with what’s left of her makeup.

“Water?” Olivier asks, holding up a bottle with her eyes on the road.

Ariadne accepts it, feeling painfully distant from her own actions, unscrewing the cap and drinking, which might be unwise, but she can’t help but think that at this stage, it would be more foolish to refuse.

“Thanks,” she croaks between sips, and the bottle creases loudly in her vice grip.

“We’ll reach civilisation again soon,” Olivier promises casually, taking back the bottle and dropping it on the seat beside her. “We can get some real person food then.”

Ariadne smiles too broadly, her teeth nipping the inside of her lower lip. She sinks in her seat, face burning on the window, an unreal, too-clean burn for the sun through spoiled glass.

“Sounds great,” she says, folding her arms and hunkering down as if to rest some more.

She feels those eyes on her again, but she doesn’t look up.

The engine rumbles, too loudly beneath her, as if in disagreement.

.

.

Getting kicked out of Belarus turns out to be the easy bit.

Apparently, leaving a country is a piece of cake when one of the most powerful criminals in the capital demands it.

Latvia welcomes Robert Sinclair, not exactly with open arms, but without the side order of hostility he could have received. Not to mention, it’s a hop, skip and jump away from safety; he knows as soon as he gets within sight of Tallinn, he’ll have all the friends he needs to find shelter.

Three days after he walks out of Hugo Schevner’s house with a bag over his head, which he accepts simply for posterity’s sake, he crosses the border into Estonia.

Nikita collects him like a puppy from the pound, and he collapses into the front seat of the car, too weary to do anything other than groan his gratitude and press his hands against the hot air vents.

“Sinsee,” Nikita says sternly. “You know I can’t be ferrying you around the Baltic forever. You take more chaperoning than my teenage daughter.”

Sinclair has a few choice responses to that one, beginning and ending with the fact that Nikita’s daughter hasn’t been a teenager in a long time. However, he knows better than to argue with a man about his children.

“I thought you might not be able to help, if Schevner blacklisted me.”

 _“Paw,”_ Nikita scoffs, flapping a hand at Sinclair and laughing scornfully. “Hugo doesn’t tell me what to do. He relies on my Finnish ports too much to have a tantrum about the company I keep.”

Nikita’s large frame fills the car almost as completely as his booming voice. His face is angular and expressionless, a single line between his eyebrows so deeply set in a permanent half-scowl that Sinclair is certain he’s never seen the man without it.

Sinclair doubts anyone could tell Nikita what to do with any real effect.

He also doubts the man would be going to such lengths as to pick him up himself if it wasn’t for the perceived life debt owed to him after saving his son’s life some eight years ago.

It pays off, that kind of effort.

“How’s Robin?” he asks obligingly, and Nikita gives the exact same grunt of token appreciation he always does.

“Still alive,” he replies, like this is the best his son can do. “I’m having some trouble with a new boy at the embassy, though. He’s paining me, Sinsee.”

This is almost all Nikita will undoubtedly say on the matter, but Sinclair more than understands.

Front seat rides men like Nikita Rebane don’t come cheap, and if all Sinclair is going to have to do is grease a few palms at a capital embassy to pay back this favour, he’ll count himself more than lucky.

Through the windscreen he can see the rolling outline of Tallinn approaching. The road isn’t too busy, and the sky is peppered with clouds. It’s not very cold, but with the meagre scraps of sleep and biscuits he’s managed to steal for himself since being set loose, he’s shivering.

“Is the Metropol still acceptable?” Sinclair asks, an obligatory question, to which, unsurprisingly, Nikita flaps his hand again even more violently than before.

“You will be sleeping in the apartment. I don’t want to hear about it. You look shit, Sinsee.”

Sinclair laughs, thanking Nikita gratefully. He feels shit, and he doubts he looks any better.

He’s stayed at the apartment once before, during a bitter February blizzard. He wonders if it still smells of peppermint and walnut, and if the carpets are still thicker than most duvets he’s ever slept under.

It will be the perfect opportunity to recuperate, as well as a chance to figure out his next move. Whatever it is Nikita wants from him, it won’t take more than three days. Plenty of time to find a way to Portland.

Or, better yet, to track down where Eames went after escaping Belarus.

A yawn catches him off guard, which he fails to stifle.

Nikita laughs jovially, cupping the back of his head in a rough slap.

“You’ll sleep like a baby,” he says, grinning. “Or the dead.”

It could be a threat, Sinclair supposes, as he laughs and nods at Nikita, rubbing the bridge of his nose with the back of his hand and badly suppressing a second yawn.

Too late, he forgets not to think about Olly Bates’ slack, pasty face as he lay motionless against the fluffy pillows in that dark, prison bedroom, his mangled broken fingers taped together like matchsticks.

He closes his eyes, and fakes another yawn so he can rub tiredly at his eyes.

Nikita accepts it, slapping his head once more and returning his grip to the wheel.

“Rest, Sinsee. The world will wait for you.”

It isn’t true, he thinks as he puts his hands back on the blasting air vents, a shudder running through his spine, before pressing his forehead to the backs of his hands.

The world doesn’t wait for anyone.

.

.

“What do you mean, you don’t like it? It’s your _favourite!”_ Yusuf splutters, sitting in front of his plate of tilapia and collard greens. It’s not as if he spent _hours_ slaving over the meal per say.

It’s just, well. This is unprecedented.

Gasira, sitting across the table with her arms folded over her chest, makes a wobbly sound that’s somewhere between a _harrumph_ and a giggle.

“You put too many chillies in the marinade,” she says, and her brow creases terribly with a look of dreadful pain. “Do you want me to go into labour already?”

Her eyes are dewy with self-pity, and she unfolds her arms to press her open hands over the nutshell swell of her tummy. She’s a little on the small side for five months, but the obstetrician had assured them both in the check-up last week that there was nothing to worry about.

“You’re not going to go into labour, njiwa,” he says, but it doesn’t make her smile like it usually does.

The crease of her downturned mouth deepens; her shoulders are hunched to bear the weight of her worries.

“I really don’t like it,” she says, eyeing the fish in front of her with a particular kind of dread that Yusuf has never seen before.

In all the years he has known Gasira, many more than the ones they’ve been married for, she’s never been one for fuss. Her bold, direct manner had been one of the most enticing things about her; the eagle sharpness of her eyes and the way she often used three words when five would be have been better,

A little flustered, torn between the desire to tease the frown off her face and the urge to start crying at the waste of food, he gets up and moves around the table to take her hands, pulling them away from her midriff just far enough to kiss the crown of her belly.

He pulls her hands to his cheeks, holding them there very gently.

“Then I can make you something else,” he says as reassuringly as he can. “What would you like?”

“I don’t know,” Gasira sniffs, eyes darting around the room and pointedly avoiding her plate.

She sucks her upper lip into her mouth, and he recognises that tell much more easily.

“Are you going to throw up?” he asks, already creaking up to standing, ready to pull her with him.

At first, Gasira shakes her head, only to nod ferociously.

“Mmhmm,” she hums, her shoulders bunching up to her ears and her hands rushing to her mouth as she staggers past him, stumbling to the sink in the kitchen, which is closest, and vomiting over the cutlery lying in the basin.

“Oh _ohhh,_ she whimpers a little wretchedly, and Yusuf has nothing but piercing, painful love for her in that moment, staring into the sink, her head ducked in humiliation.

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs, even as he kisses her bare shoulder, stroking her loose dark hair.

“Stop that now,” he says tenderly. “I’m sorry you didn’t like the tilapia. What can I make you? Some tea? How about I spoon some honey into that new tea.”

Gasira’s thin fingers are gripping the edge of the sink very tightly, and she keeps her mouth firmly closed as she shakes her head, still aiming into the sink like there’s more to come.

“Alright then,” he says, and he threads his fingers to the back of her head, his nails brushing against her scalp. “What can I do?”

“I don’t know,” she snaps irritably, even as she takes his free hand and drags him closer.

He has to kiss her shoulder again to hide his smile.

“I’ll just stay here, then,” he says, like she’d let him do anything else.

After a few minutes of shaky breaths and brittle silence, her fingers tighten around his momentarily, in what might be need or panic or just momentary affection. Yusuf runs his flat hand down her back, massaging between her shoulders carefully.

Her breathing evens out slowly, the dark curtain of her hair tucked behind her ears.

She licks her lips, runs the tap and scoops cool water into her mouth with her hand.

“Better?” Yusuf asks cautiously and is rewarded with a weak nod. “Ok, let’s get you on the couch. I’m going to make you some of that tea.”

Gasira huffs, though doesn’t refuse this time. She sinks happily enough into the cushions, sweat beading on her forehead and she even smiles warmly when she catches him staring down at her.

She’s always been the most beautiful creature he’s ever seen, the only person unbeaten by the dreams he’s chased most of his waking life. He would do anything for her; honeyed tea doesn’t even register on the vast array of things he would do for her.

“Have you spoken to Nicks?” she asks, taking a deep breath and holding it in her lungs. Her hands rest loosely on her tummy, fingers splayed as if to cradle the baby inside.

Yusuf shrugs, wobbling his hand in a _so-so_ motion.

“He got on the plane to Seattle,” he says, which was an utterly astonishing achievement on Yusuf’s part, as far as Yusuf is concerned. “Haven’t heard from him since. He should be there by now.”

Through the open window, a delicate, aromatic breeze breathes in.

“He’s very stupid,” Gasira says, wearing that frown again, and her eyes flutter closed.

Yusuf grins, and a silent laugh shakes his chest.

“Yes,” he agrees. “He’s very stupid. But he’s still the best forger we know, so I suppose we’ll have to forgive him.”

Gasira quirks one eyebrow without opening her eyes. She raises a hand to wipe at her hairline, smoothing a few rogue strands away from her face.

“Stupid boy,” she says, as if she and Eames aren’t the same age; as if he didn’t fence her first forgery for free, just because he liked it.

Yusuf reaches down to squeeze her ankle gently, rubbing his thumb over the sharp angle of the bone.

“I’ll get you that tea,” he says, and the tiny lift of Gasira’s closed lips is worth it.

Her smile is worth anything, actually. He’s always known that.

.

.

By the time they arrive at the hotel, the day has mostly escaped them.

Arthur has caught Dom up on what little headway he’d managed to make on excavating David Ezra’s mind before they were interrupted by their eternally anonymous attacker. He’s feeling, if not better, at least calmer.

For all his faults, Dom’s just as sharp as the day they met, and his insights don’t carry the condescending edge to them that they once did, whenever the crush of reality became unbearable. He’s lost a great deal of tension, the kind he always carried in his hands and shoulders and words.

“If he has been incepted, we aren’t going to find it by going under, you know,” he says.

He’s taken the last leg of the drive, and he pulls into the turnoff that leads to the hotel with careful hands. Hands used to driving a family vehicle.

“We’ll need to know what we’re looking for,” Arthur agrees. “Problem is, Aldman was always a bigger fan of a blunt tool than a scalpel. He wasn’t one for subtlety.”

“Yeah,” Dom says, hissing through his teeth as he crawls into a space in the parking lot, closer to the exit road than the door. “But the mind’s resilient. Even if he did go in swinging, chances are Ezra’s mind will have done its best to make sense of what was left behind. If it’s not so bad you can tell when he’s awake…”

He leaves the idea hanging. Maybe so he doesn’t have to voice too close a comparison to Mal, or maybe just because he wants to get out of the car.

“Won’t know until we start,” Arthur says, and he clambers out of the car without prompting.

They’ve packed light. Checking in with the hotel manager, a portly man called Halliday, is a matter of handshakes and bell whistles. Dom has agreed to take a room on the first floor, leaving Arthur to take the third.

They pass a set of open double doors to get to their rooms, through which they can see a lively enough bar. The thrum of generic, algorithm beat music is coming from the speakers, but there’s a bandstand in one corner that looks regularly used, and the tables are nicely spaced out for privacy.

“Meet back in an hour?” Dom asks, tapping his watch with his thumb.

While it might be prudent under normal circumstances not to be seen together in such close quarters, time is not their friend in this instance. They can’t afford to make obscure rendezvous points, not when there’s an adequate meeting spot two minutes from their hotel room doors.

“I’ll tell Ezra,” Arthur agrees, tipping his imaginary hat before taking the stairs.

The second-floor corridor is as simply decorated as the lobby. The carpet is a deep, inviting shade of green and the walls are a soothing crème.

He knocks three times on the door marked _207,_ a triplet rap of his middle finger knuckle.

It takes almost a minute for the door to crack open. Not quite long enough for Arthur to feel suspicious, late enough that he’s less than impressed.

“Arthur, good to see you,” Ezra says, standing in the gap of the door with a sheepish look of relief.

“We’ll meet in the bar in an hour,” Arthur says. “You settled OK?”

Ezra nods. His eyes are a little bleary with sleeplessness, but he’s no worse off than he looked on that first night in Milwaukee, sipping on his rum and coke like a dead man.

“I’m real grateful, you know,” he says in a pit of easy earnestness.

“Yeah,” Arthur says, because he has absolutely no polite response to this.

He has to remind himself, not for the first time, that for all the things that _are_ Ezra’s fault, it isn’t his fault Arthur’s got himself in this situation. No sir, he did this one all by himself.

With little more than a curt nod, he backs away from Ezra’s door and returns to the staircase, making his way past the security cameras he’s been reliably informed are little more than show and tell toys.

The third floor is identical to the second, and he pulls out of its little cardboard wallet the keycard to _307._

He slots it in, the light pings to green above the handle, and when he pushes open the door it brushes heavily over the carpet. Barely two steps in, he feels all of his bristling instincts come to life.

For a long, aching moment, he can’t tell how, but he is suddenly aware that he’s not alone in the room.

Someone got here first.

The door to the bathroom is on his immediate right, left ajar without the light on.

He nudges it open all the way with his foot, one hand tucked into the side of his suitcase, within reach of the handle of the only knife he’s got on his person.

There’s nobody inside, but he can see even through the dark a small pile of crap on the surface next to the sink.

He spots a crumpled box labelled porous tape, and all the fighting instinct drains out of him.

Something blooms in its place, ricocheting through his ribs. He drops his bag in the doorway to the bathroom, takes three more steps properly into the room, and is confronted by the single most welcome sight he’s seen in over a week.

 The bedcovers are crumpled, the cushions strewn haphazardly. Arthur reaches over to the wall and flicks the light switch, casting gaudy gold beams of light from the centre lamp fitting above the headboard.

Eames’ naked back is in full view, full gloriously bruised and tattooed view, his arms stretched up under the pillow he’s buried his face into, leaving only tufts of burnt corn hair in sight.

Arthur watches the way his ribs move with his breaths, the dark shine of his hair, stripes of muscles lashed purple across one of his kidneys.

Air is trapped in bubbles in his throat. He knows Eames is awake, will have woken the second he opened the door, but he hasn’t moved, not even to turn his head.

In a flurry, Arthur has kicked off his shoes, dropped his jacket on the desk, and is crawling up the bed as carefully as his demanding haste will allow. His arms are quickly hooked on either side of Eames’ waist, up around his arms, so that his grasping hands can take hold of his shoulders, while he presses his cold nose directly between his shoulder blades.

He can feel Eames turning, just enough to shift his weight, and he kisses every inch of bare skin he can reach without moving.

Mouth pressed directly over the ribbed notches of Eames’ spine, his heat seeping through his clothes, Arthur breathes in his sour, woodsy scent and can’t prevent the shiver that runs through him, so violently he knows Eames has to feel it, too, slotted like jigsaw pieces as they are, only Arthur’s clothes and the duvet between them.

“Thank you,” he whispers, the words trapped into Eames’ back like another tattoo.

Eames breathes in slowly, deep enough for Arthur to feel it in his own ribs.

“I’m still unspeakably angry with you,” he says, that slow, lion’s yawn of a voice, muffled by the pillow.

Arthur keeps his lips tucked against Eames’ back, hoping he can feel his smile as it breaks loose of its melancholy, self-pitying prison.

“I know,” he replies.

Eames turns his head a little; glancing up, Arthur can see the outline of eyelashes, and the purple-green of bruising around his eye.

“I haven’t forgiven you yet,” he says, a little clearer away from the pillow, orchid delicate in the heavy golden light.

“I know,” Arthur replies.

Eames shifts again, one arm coming up so that he can push away from the pillow, looking over his shoulder to better see Arthur plastered to his back, barnacle blistered.

When his eyes meet Arthur’s, they’re significantly gentler than they were in Lisbon. He licks his dry lips and says,

“I’ll get over it eventually.”

“I know,” Arthur whispers for a third time against his back, even though, right up until that very second, he hadn’t really known at all, not for sure.

He does now though.

Eames continues his wriggling turn until he’s lying properly on his back. Arthur smooths the covers over his tender ribs, hands reverently pressing over his heart, across his shoulder and down his arm, until he finds his fingers with his own.

“How’s your knee?” he asks, eyeing Eames’ legs through the covers as if he might x-ray them himself.

“Fucked up,” Eames says with a humourless laugh. With the hand not taken hostage by Arthur’s vice-like fingers, he scrubs at his face, narrowly avoiding the worst of the bruising. “I might be out of the game, you know.”

He’s said that before. He said it after the Whishaw Job and he said it after the Barberini Palace Job and he said it in a hotel room in Vienna after he spent days throwing up every sip of water Arthur forced him to take.

“You’re not,” Arthur retorts with all the confidence that the situation doesn’t merit.

Knee injuries are no laughing matter, not for someone who may or may not at any given moment need to go on the run, both literally and metaphorically. Eames isn’t being dramatic when he says he might be out.

He is, however, being a pessimist, which is Arthur’s job, thank you very much.

“How did you get here?” he asks, refusing to linger on Eames’ woe-is-me routine.

Eames’ grin splits into a yawn that he covers with the back of his hand, and he strokes his fingertips through Arthur’s hair, breaking thin clumps from their mould and tugging them into tufty, unhelpful curls.

“You can thank Yusuf,” Eames says with strained cheer, to which Arthur rolls his eyes knowingly.

“You mean I can thank ‘Sira,” he corrects.

Eames laughs fondly, nodding and still fiddling with Arthur’s hair, looking like he’s enjoying himself a bit too much.

“Probably,” he says, and he brushes his hand smoothly down Arthur’s back and side, along his hip and hooking him at the knee, so as to pull him half over his thigh in a lazy straddle. He pulls a pleased, comfortable expression and says, “Did you know she’s planned our wedding?”

“What did you think the cake recipes were for?” Arthur scoffs.

He doesn’t mention that he’d actually tried the lemon cake one she’d sent, one lonely sky day while Eames was on a job in Hanoi and he was bad tempered with the tail end of the bronchitis that had kept him from a job of his own.

It had been decent, too, only, he didn’t think he’d be able to stand the teasing if Eames ever found out.

Eames gives him a halfpenny grin, his fingers still tucked shy into the back of Arthur’s knee, denting the vulnerable skin with absent nudges, a rhythm of their own.

“Just to be clear,” he says, chin folded into his chest to look down at Arthur with stern disapproval, “I’ll never marry you.”

Arthur shoulders his way closer into Eames’ side with a deeply pained sigh.

“You can’t marry me,” he says, as if this is a truth that has plagued him for some time. “I’m legally dead. So are you.”

Eames mutters into Arthur’s hair something that sounds suspiciously similar to _as if that’s stopped us before,_ which he magnanimously decides not to take as a poor marriage proposal, but instead a snooty ruffling of Eames’ paradise bird feathers.

He’s never much liked being told what to do, even more so what not to do.

Fortunately, Eames isn’t in the mood for a spiteful shotgun wedding, and promptly rolls over, trapping Arthur into the mattress as he rolls out a stiff shoulder.

“Did you bring Cobb?” Eames asks, immediately nullifying any and all interest Arthur’s cock might otherwise have shown in the familiar, welcome weight pressing down over the length of his body.

“Yes,” he replies, and despite the cosy way in which Eames, bedcovers and all, have snuck their way around the space of Arthur’s sprawled limbs, leaving him little room to do more than breathe and slump, he can sense the streel threads amongst the cotton, creeping into the bed with them.

In spite of the furnace of his clinging embrace, and his mouth hovering close to Arthur’s throat, Eames’ anxiety is palpable. Arthur reaches up, finds purchase in the meat of his back and presses the flat of his palm over it, steadying.

“Hmm,” Eames replies, words fanning in damp bursts of heat down Arthur’s neck as he continues, “When does Ariadne get in?”

“Tomorrow, hopefully. Maybe the day after. She went dark after she got out of France. I left her a message to pick up.”

Eames doesn’t acknowledge that one, but his thoughts are loud, bouncing between them. Arthur can feel the butterfly kisses of his blinks on his earlobe, and his fingers dig into the crevice of Eames’ spine in response.

“Is _he_ here already, then?”

The venom Eames clearly tries to inject into the question is diluted by the uneasy, pregnant pause that surrounds it.

It’s easy, sometimes, to chalk Eames’ general state of indignation to the superciliousness of a quaint, pseudo-aristocracy, the likes of which Arthur is ill-acquainted with. It’s easy, sometimes, for Arthur to blind himself to the sweat on Eames’ brow when he wakes up from the dreams he doesn’t share.

He tries to look down, but Eames has plastered himself too close, and he can’t see the expression on his face, can’t even see whether or not his eyes are open or closed. It’s difficult to gauge Eames like this, when he’s nothing but steel wire limbs and clipped vowel sounds.

“Two-oh-seven,” Arthur says, and lets Eames figure out for himself that Ezra’s directly underneath them, right this very second. Just ceiling paint and carpet between them.

When Eames doesn’t say anything else, Arthur turns to brush his nose through the tufts of unkempt hair on his head.

“You don’t have to help, you know,” he reminds Eames, just in case Eames has forgotten that Arthur’s never actually managed to force Eames to do _anything_ in his life, intractable oaf that he is.

The soft, lingering kiss Eames leaves on his neck before propping himself up on his forearms is more than enough, until he sees the smug look carved into the green and blue splodges on Eames’ face.

“Darling,” he drawls, in that silk ribbon voice that Arthur’s seen work on a hundred marks and clients, but has never really convinced him. “I’ve come all this way. Don’t tell me you’re going to deny me the pleasure of seeing his ugly mug when he realises I’m not dead.”

Eames has never been ashamed of his vindictive streak, and Arthur can’t pretend he doesn’t have on of his own a mile wide and twice as long. In the end, it’s their last line of defence; Arthur thinks, quite possibly, Eames would have died in the desert years ago if he hadn’t been clinging to the chance of one day setting the record to rights.

And yet.

“We’re not here to torture him,” he says firmly.

Eames smirks, head tilted to match Arthur’s, and the malice is real.

“Poor word choice,” he says, and the pinch behind Arthur’s ribs is easy to ignore.

“It’s still true,” Arthur says, refusing to look away from the cut glass of Eames’ stare.

He’s almost entirely on top of Arthur, now. The covers have slipped down, revealing faded bruises and a patchy tan; dark boxer briefs and a brace around his knee. Arthur’s starting to sweat under the weight of Eames and duvet and tightly wound anger.

For all his friendliness, Eames is never nastier than when he’s smiling, and Arthur shouldn’t forget that.

“Eames, please,” he says, and if he’s asking too much, he knows Eames will have no qualms about saying it.

Then again, it wouldn’t be the first time Eames was too proud to admit he was in over his head.

It wouldn’t be the first time Arthur took advantage of that, either, more to the point.

Eames licks his lips, shuffling stubbornly, as if waiting for Arthur to break first. His arms are braced easily on either side of Arthur’s torso, their legs slotted together, and when his weight slips, and their hips align, Arthur can’t help the faint, strangled noise that erupts in the back of his throat.

If his spike of arousal is mutual, Eames doesn’t acknowledge it. He stares down at Arthur, all the things he wants to say written over his face more clearly than permanent marker in his skin. Arthur tries very hard not to move, tries to remind himself that if Eames wanted to, he could wrap his hands around Arthur’s throat right now and he’d be powerless to stop him.

This thought, unfortunately, does not have the desired effect.

Eames purses his lips, and Arthur tries not to interrupt his existential crisis with his libido but he’s a human being and he’s never been weaker than under the weight of this man.

When the blush clawing its way over Arthur’s chest reaches past his collar, staining his cheeks, Eames raises a distrustful, judgy eyebrow.

He opens his mouth, and maybe it’s to be kind or maybe it’s to be cruel, but Arthur decides he’d rather not find out. Instead, he beats Eames to the punch and says, very quickly and far too loudly for how close Eames’ face is to his own,

“I told Cobb I was op som.”

That, at least, stalls Eames’ in his spiteful tracks. Eyebrows arched high in his forehead, he waits for further explanation, uncannily similar to the way a cat waits to be fed. Arthur omits the comparison as he continues,

“I didn’t tell him the rest. Although I did rectify any false beliefs he had about you being a sergeant. Or a duke. Or a fixer.”

Eames’ outrage, while keenly exaggerated, is instantaneous.

“Screw you, Arthur,” he scowls. “I am a fixer.”

Arthur’s laugh bursts out of him, and the electric terror cording his muscles soaks back into his bloodstream, leaving him looser, more readily able to scoop his arms up over Eames’ shoulders and feather his fingers through his hair.

Smiling, he takes in Eames’ distracted belligerence with leisurely gratitude.

“You helped the cousin of a minor mafia member by fencing a single antique Sicilian seal, Eames.”

“And?” Eames splutters, as if perplexed by Arthur’s summary. “He had a problem and I fixed it.”

The cold thunder hasn’t evaporated, not entirely, but the air is clearer in the room.

The brushed brass of the light is warm enough, and when Eames slips sideways to lie on his back next to Arthur, it feels less like a retreat than it might have.

Clasping his hands together, Eames stretches them up above his head, spine arching, and Arthur watches the splashed injuries of his torso contort to the bend. He pokes one, a shy inch south of a floating rib, and Eames flinches away with a grunt.

“Should I have told Cobb everything?” Arthur asks.

He’s not wholly against the idea. Nevertheless, there is no scenario he can conceive of in which he could ever have told the story without Eames’ express permission. There have been too many mistakes in the past for that, starting and finishing with a particularly quarrelsome, redheaded extractor.

It’s not that Eames has ever _said_ he blames Arthur for the disintegration of his relationship with Olivier, it’s simply, well.

He’s never said he doesn’t blame Arthur, either.

If Eames catches onto the underscore of Arthur’s question, he hides it well. He doesn’t mention her much, these days, for which Arthur is grateful; sore spot that was once cast in bronze, now rusted over.

“I don’t think so,” Eames replies in a rare moment of indifference. “It’s not like I’ll have to play subject, anyway. We hid our little dream dilemma for years without getting caught.”

Arthur hesitates, and of course Eames notices; Eames is never more aware of anything than Arthur, and that’s a blessing, usually, but not when Arthur’s getting found out as a filthy liar.

Eames’ head turns on the pillow, his eyes narrowing suspiciously at Arthur’s guilty, pleased grimace.

Biting the bullet, Arthur decides if the truth will out, he may as well let it flow.

“Ariadne figured it out,” he admits.

Saying things quickly has never worked to soften the impact of a revelation for Eames, but Arthur will be damned if he doesn’t keep trying it until the end of his days.

“What?” Eames snaps, and there’s nothing disingenuous in the sheer bafflement of his expression as he stares at Arthur. “When?” he demands.

There’s not really anything Arthur can do except shrug, chuckling nervously.

“Almost immediately,” he admits, to his own shame, and perhaps to Eames’ too. “On the Fischer Job.”

Eames takes a deep breath, shaking his head. The corners of his lips twitch upwards, and he makes a similar, disbelieving sound of amusement.

“She never said anything,” Eames says, and _yes,_ blame her, Arthur is more than fine with Eames directing his accusations at her instead.

“I told her not to,” he admits in a shrugging dismissal, as if telling Ariadne to keep her nose out of other people’s business has ever worked before. Eames’ snort says he agrees with the sentiment.

Unfortunately, this also brings Arthur to a second revelation, which he had tried his best to put out of his mind.

“Oh,” he says, with an air of flippancy that he punctuates with the back of his hand tapping Eames’ ribs, and Eames responds to with a look of such base accusation, he has to look at the ceiling instead. “Cobb knows about Limbo, though.”

“How?”

For a word that’s all of three letters, the vitriol with which Eames says it, however exaggerated it might be, is honestly one of his more impressive talents. Eames has never been a bell-ringing endorser of Cobb’s; a feeling that has not mellowed over the years since his underhanded play inside Robert Fischer’s head.

Arthur glances sideways, just enough to see Eames’ attention is unwavering, a heated, hungry look on his face.

“Yusuf was the one that told him,” Arthur says defensively.

It’s unlikely Eames will be able to hold onto his petty annoyances if they’re against Yusuf. The man’s practically his brother-in-law.

At Eames’ snort of disbelief, Arthur huffs loudly, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Well, he mentioned it. I had to explain, or he’d have been guessing all kinds of crap.”

The noise Eames makes at that is closer to assent than anger, so Arthur takes it as a win and turns on his side, facing the long lines of skin with abject hunger and gentle curiosity. His quick, bluebird eyes are closed, arms angled up around his head, leaving his ribs vulnerable.

For the first time, Arthur is able to take stock of the pockmarked injuries littering Eames, courtesy of Zumani and Schevner’s carelessness. The damage is old, now; the slice in his side has scabbed over, and other than the tightly wrapped knee, it doesn’t look like anything will last longer than another week.

“Christ,” he says scornfully, pulling Arthur’ attention back to his closed-up face. “I hope he doesn’t expect us to bond over shared experience.”

While he’s clearly angling for a laugh, Arthur finds he can’t offer him one. He doesn’t share Eames’ glib humour for the memory of those endless hours in the buzzard circling depths of Limbo.

Arthur knocks his ribs again, knuckling a gap between the keyboard of straining bones.

“I told him it was the worst four days of my life.”

Before he can withdraw his hand, Eames makes a grab for it, his fingers hooked around his thumb, holding it to his ribs like a charm.

“Did you really?” Eames asks, and despite his smirk it’s a softer question.

Arthur leans his head across the mattress to nudge at the ball of his shoulder.

Outside, the crackle of rain lifts the grit from the window, half-revealed by the crème and tan curtains that trail to the floor. Arthur watches it speckling the glass; feels the ragged heat radiating from the body tucked close to his side, and he thinks he can feel a pair of dark blue eyes watching him.

He daren’t look around to check as he swallows around the spines of his next words.

“When Cal told us that you were on that job, and we thought you were dead, my mind blanked,” he says. The words are grit and salt, cotton-candy between his teeth. “I couldn’t even think it. Olivier slapped him, you know. He was talking about the job and she was so, so _angry,_ and all I could think was how the last thing I ever said to you was a lie.”

Beside him, Eames is calm. The fingers itching at his thumb are still, and the incremental shifts of his body’s breath has grown silent.

“I’m sorry for letting you think I was dead, even accidentally.”

There’s no reason for it to land any less hollow a knock than the first time, back in Lisbon. Nothing has changed, nothing Arthur has done, other than to turn tail when told.

Nothing has changed, expect that Eames is here, where he wasn’t told to be. Lying heavy and whole in his bed, uninvited but so terribly welcome. The detached pieces of Arthur’s fragile existence, scattering across the continents between which he has divided himself, are slowly collecting back to their rightful places.

Misaligned magnets; the jut of thin hips and the silverback scar in a wide, warm palm. Oxfordshire consonants and East London vowel breaks.

Outside, the smattering applause of the rain grows louder.

When he turns his head, his nose pressing into a broad chest dusted with hair, Eames is looking at him.

It’s dangerous, his closeness; how peach flesh soft he looks, without the thorns of misery or hate. The white light of his eyes and the taste of his open mouth.

Arthur pulls away, as quickly as he pressed in, his lips wet and his mouth dry. The gooseflesh of his arms leaves a tremor in his smile.

“I’m glad you’re here. Even if you’re still mad at me.”

Eames kisses his top lip, a ticklish peck; then the flat of his cheek where they both know a dimple can be easily coaxed out, and finally the bony cut of his jaw beneath his ear. His mouth is still close to Arthur’s earlobe when he whispers, as wry and chaste as he’ll never be,

“Well, I always was a sucker for a happy ending.”

Arthur gives him a tight-lipped grin, kissing the corner of his mouth, tonguing the rough of his stubble.

“You’re such a liar,” he says, not for the first time, nor the last.

He’s startled by the hand that unexpectedly cups his face, the dry heat of it, brushed sand in a storm. The forehead pushing against his.

There are cliffs more easily persuaded to back down than this man in his bed.

“Un _speak_ ably angry,” Eames murmurs, a throwaway red card, a ship passing through the fog.

Arthur nods, and replies into the cavern of Eames’ mouth,

“I know.”

Against the window, the rain is getting heavier. Despite the lamp above their heads, the room is starting to feel darker.

“We’re meeting at the bar downstairs.”

“When?”

Arthur extracts himself, just far enough to grab Eames’ watch from the nightstand. Another nimble finger novelty, judging by the inscription on the back that dedicates it _To P, Love H xxx_

He’s distracted from berating him by the other, more important side of the watch.

“Very soon,” he groans, sitting up with the upmost reluctance. “Still want to see Ezra’s face when he finds out you’re not dead?”

Eames clasps his hands behind his back, like the smug little shithead he is, and smirks broadly.

“Looking forward to it, my love.”

Dragging himself from the bed feels a lot like watching Eames leave their Marseille flat.

He tosses the watch onto Eames’ stomach, eyebrows raised disapprovingly.

“Your kleptomania will not slide here, Mr Eames,” he says, trailing into the bathroom, smug laughter following him, louder than the rain.

The light is harsher here, and the shower stutters when he reaches to click it on. He’s halfway undressed when he hears, Punch and Judy pleased through the open door,

“Just wait ‘til you see the one I got you.”

There are fragments that Arthur left behind, bad pennies coming back, shiny as new.

He drops the rest of his clothes on the towel rack and steps into the scalding water, just as a wonderfully familiar silhouette limps into view.

Eames doesn’t get in with him, but he does sit on the closed toilet seat, watching him with attentive reservation. By the looks of it, he doesn’t blink once.

Arthur smiles into the burn of the shower.

Unspeakable anger. He’ll take it over any silence.

He can work with that.

.

.


	13. NINE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friends,
> 
> I hope you're still with me?
> 
> Thanks so much for all your lovely comments and kudos, they are an inspiration in and of themselves.
> 
> Your friend,  
> LRCx
> 
> (P.S. I didn't mean to write my own Council of Elrond, but I sort of did, so I just tried to keep it concise and more to the point.)

 

.

.

Olivier refuses to feel flattered that they don’t even attempt to extract from her.

It’s not flattery. It’s cowardice.

Despite the foggy slur of her drugged thoughts, she fights sleep at every turn, just in case.

It’s a wasted effort. Half of Aldman’s meagre crew are too superstitious to take her under; the other half too lazy. As for Aldman, well. He’s never been renowned for his prowess at the delicate art of extraction.

Lucas Aldman is, for all his intimidating glowers and occasional bursts of charm, the very definition of middle management. Olivier has no doubt that being promoted beyond Captaincy at such a young age had the profound countereffect of nullifying whatever scraps of genuine ambition had survived the man’s choppy military career.

Giving him a title had clearly been as much about getting him out of the way as recognising his service, long before just getting him out entirely.

Buffered by pillows and narcotics, Olivier lies back in her hospital bed, staring as best she can at the young woman asleep only a few feet away, the three men slumped in chairs around her like careless sentinels. The PASIV is so close, and impossibly out of reach.

Aldman had thrown Olivier a smug look as he purposefully kept their intentions in full view, Ariadne’s eyes drooping shut as the sedative dripped through her IV bag.

Olivier, for her part, had kept her opinions to herself, refraining at great effort from reminding the man when exactly pride cometh.

Now, as the only conscious person in the room, she finds herself the victim of an equally dangerous curse: sheer boredom.

Olivier first learned the basic crafts of dreamshare from her grandfather, much to the consternation of her parents, not long after getting drunk to celebrate the end of her O-Levels.

It’s been a long time since she had no tools of mental defences to keep her occupied.

All the same, there’s only so much meditative long division she can do in her head before she starts twitching, desperate for some stimulation.

To her right, Ariadne turns her head a fraction.

What little comfort Olivier has been able to retain is the clear notion that Aldman is going to underestimate Ariadne Collins.

Her youth, her lack of proper training, her status as a mere _architect._ Any one of these might be enough to cause a foolhardy extractor to misjudge her. It seems Aldman hasn’t the care to consider _who_ trained her, however haphazardly he might have done it.

Olivier takes a slow breath, trying to ignore the itch on her nose she knows she can’t reach and isn’t about to debase herself by trying.

The handcuffs are an amusing enough decoration. _That_ she finds flattering. How exactly do they anticipate she’s going to escape with a broken femur, only one intact ankle bone and a dislocated spinal disc?

Even with her eyes closed, the fluorescent lights are too much for her, their eerie blue haze bleeding through her eyelashes.

She blinks up at the ceiling, at her saline drip, at her bruised forearms.

It’s not often she feels helpless, these days.

She hopes, more than anything, she isn’t overestimating Ariadne Collins.

She hopes, too, that she gets the chance to tell Arthur he was right.

.

.

The hotel is more than acceptable. The bed is comfortable, the curtains heavy. The shower is close enough to powerful, the window has a semi-decent view.

There is in fact no rational excuse for the bedbug scratch of paranoia Dom can feel like a second skin, itchy in his clothes and fearful as wood under a termite's bite. It’s got nothing to do with  _this_ hotel. He thinks it would be no different if they were staying at The Plaza.

Dom hasn’t had much cause to stay in hotels since getting back home. The few family holidays they’ve attempted to varying success have been purposefully in chalets and cottages; a beach house on the nearest coastline.

He’s little more than a day’s drive from his kids. All the same, James’ nightmares are a darker shadow on Dom’s mind now he isn’t there to pull his son out of them.

Not to mention the violent, distrustful hug Phillipa had given him before he left, as if she’d suspected despite his promises he wouldn’t be coming back.

Dom’s not entirely sure how he survived two years so far from his children. Their closeness these past four years has obliterated his emotional defences.

He can barely stand the distance between them from across a single state line.

Unable to bear a second longer avoiding the hotel window, despite its ground floor view of the crooked conifer trunks, he leaves the room early and makes for the bar. It’s still lively, a chatty collection of late lunchers and early drinkers.

Three men clustered around a table, dressed casual and sipping pints, won’t draw any kind of unwanted attention here.

He scans the room, eyes a few faces as if looking for someone, before buying a half pint of San Miguel and laying claim to a table near a windowed wall that gives him a good view of the room at large.

Close by, he can smell salty fries and ranch dressing, the crisp of burnt chicken skin, and his stomach makes its approval known. Dom doubts he could suitably enjoy food, however inviting it smells, so he ignores his body’s demands and sips his beer instead.

The room is brightly lit, well decorated with touches of friendly colour and entirely clock free to trap its customers inside for quite some time. The bar is generously stocked, the bartenders flashy with their cocktail shakers and attractive, burgundy and black uniforms.

He’s sure any number of hotel guests have over the years come in for one drink before going out, only to glance at their watches and realise they’re over an hour late for their reservations elsewhere.

As he waits, Dom feels some portion of his nerves ease away. It’s much easier to forget he’s in a hotel, here. The laughter and hunger of the distracted diners and drinkers are easy to tune in and out of, pleasantly diverting radio stations at his disposal.

In fact, he’s so relaxed by the time twenty uneventful minutes have ticked past that it takes him a long moment to realise he recognises a man suddenly standing at the bar.

It’s Eames.

Apprehension erupts in Dom’s chest. He grips his glass tight.

Eames is dressed in a casually cut suit, lacking a tie as he often is, and his hair looks wet from this distance, scraped back off his face.

His face, which, what little Dom can see of it, looks badly bruised, halfway healed in tinges of green and violet.

Dom watches as the forger exchanges pleasantries with the bartender, the young woman whom he had seen flipping cocktail shakers with deft hands and a cocky smirk earlier.

She’s frowning almost certainly at the sight of a man visibly suffering the after-effects of recent violence, but her expression breaks as Eames opens his wallet to pay, and she’s smiling generously by the time he hands her a tip.

He’s clearly already spotted Dom, because he makes his way to the table without hesitation, albeit with a slight limp, carrying a tall clear glass that’s crowded with ice and a pint of San Miguel.

Dom waits until he’s seated, nodding in thanks for the drink, before saying,

“You look like you’re at least three days away from deserving a fit for work note from your doctor.”

Eames smirks broadly, sipping his drink and crossing one leg over the other. Dom doesn’t miss the way his free hands helps the movement of his bad leg. He knows better than to bring attention to it.

“Luckily,” Eames replies in his laziest English drawl. “My doctor’s a close friend, and he gave me one without so much as a check-up.”

Yusuf, Dom surmises. He was surprised at first when he found out Yusuf’s indiscretion on the Fischer Job hadn’t been cause for the two men to break ties. Then again, Arthur’s still talking to Dom, isn’t he?

“What did you say to the girl at the bar?” he asks.

If anything, Eames looks more pleased than before. He pulls out his wallet, flips it open and reveals an excellently forged military ID card.

Dom has to laugh at his audacity.

“Now, I know you’re not really a sergeant,” he teases, albeit with an invisible tipped hat to Eames’ nerve.

The forger shrugs, as if he retains any inscrutability at all, and sips his drink.

Just then, the bartender in question comes out from behind the wall of beer taps carrying two glasses, one full of something that looks like coke, the other identical to Eames’. She places them confidently at the two unoccupied sides of the table, grinning mostly at Eames with a hungry flutter of her eyelashes.

Dom refrains from pointing out that Eames was probably in high school when this girl was born, but only because he has more than good reason not to believe the man’s flirtatious front anymore, if he ever did.

“Why thank you, Joanne,” Eames says in an imperfect, thoroughly convincing Boston accent that nearly makes Dom choke.

“You’re most welcome, sir,” the girl, Joanne, replies and Dom does not refrain from glowering at Eames as she walks away.

“Come now, Dominick,” Eames says when he notices, and it must be painful to smile with that pale bruising along his jaw but for reasons unknown he’s doing it anyway. “You’ve been paying me to honey pot for years. You can’t get squeamish when you realise I’m good at it.”

Deciphering Eames’ meanness is a skill Dom has never enjoyed cultivating. He’s always been a sharp blade of an individual, this man, and Dom should know better than to feel stung by some half-measured accusation that he’s been pimping Eames out all these years.

He takes a long gulp of his drink, trying not to look as ruffled as he feels. He gets the distinct impression he’s not going a very good job of it by the way Eames snorts, clasping his hands easily over his stomach and leaning back, self-satisfied in his chair.

“Where’s Arthur?” Dom asks in the least subtle segue of his adult life. He doesn’t care, he has no need to pretend, or to impress Eames. Eames has long proved he’s incapable of being impressed by anyone other than himself.

This, if nothing else, should have clued Dom in much sooner on the man’s suitability for Arthur, who once looked at a closed loop labyrinth Dom spent six weeks designing and asked,  _You mean it’s just the four quarters?_

Eames turns his head towards Dom, his eyes never leaving the door.

“He’s fetching our guest of honour.”

There’s a bite to Eames’ tone that Dom doesn’t have a place for.

It isn’t anger, it isn’t excitement. It’s not entirely dissimilar to the starving way he’d leaned into the bar to flash Joanne his false identity, stamping himself with unearned propriety.

Dom looks at Eames, hoping to glean something more form his expression.

He’s a cool, cherry glaze mask of anticipation. Dom’s not sure why he’d expected anything less.

.

.

It’s too early to wake up, much too early.

Her husband’s naked back is warm; she nestles into him, although she is much too hot already. His breaths are a comfort, the deep stretch of his ribs, molasses slow. He won’t wake for some time, up late hunched between his papers and his desk lamp.

Gasira lies awake, listening to the city wake up. It really is much too early.

It had been like this last time, too.

Her mind busy, possessed by every fleeting thought. Her body restless, unsettled by her mind’s to and fro of ideas.

She shuts her eyes, her hands pressing lightly against the small shelf of her belly. Too small, she thinks. She doesn’t care what the doctor says.

It had been like that last time, too.

Beside her, Yusuf moves a little, snuffling backwards, the bulk of his body pushing into hers.

Gasira smiles, drawing comfort from his presence.

The city is never quiet; if there is a city out there in the world that’s capable of silence, she’s not found it yet. Mombasa has its own loudness, the same as Mashhad did, and Adelaide and Lagos and London.

Mombasa is home, though, as all the others were not. She has made it so, with a man whom she loves very dearly.

A man who is good to her, and sometimes to others, too. A man whose dreams are as fantastic and vibrant as her own. Who did not smirk when she told him that one day she would have her own art gallery, but whose eyes widened, whose mouth lifted, who asked,

“Will you hang others’ paintings, too, or just your own?”

A bead of sweat drips down her temple, tickling into her scalp. Gasira wipes it away with a quick, impatient slap of her hand.

She’s dreadfully uncomfortable, and there isn’t a muscle in her body that isn’t tense. It will be six months, soon. They never got that far, last time.

She does her best not to think about last time, or the times before that. There’s nothing to gain from it, other than the weighty grief each memory brings her. Yusuf doesn’t like her talking about it, and she knows it’s because he does not enjoy contemplating the very few problems it is beyond his control to solve.

He struggles to entertain her anxieties, she can see it. Sometimes, in her most unkind moments, she thinks it must be because he does not care as she does for the loss of a precious, unseen life.

When she emerges from these darkest, thunderstorm thoughts, she always feels ashamed to have thought so little of him.

The truth is that, last time, his devastation had nearly swallowed them both whole. He had not even been able to speak; had shut himself away in his lab for three days without eating a morsel.

 _He’ll come around,_ Nicks had promised, stroking her hand before shoving a paintbrush into it and telling her to do her worst.

He’d flown out the very night it happened. It had been instinct, calling him, yet she had been surprised he shared her need for closeness.

Gasira turns to her side, pressing her spine exactly along her husband’s. When she tucks her legs back, it’s easy to interlock their ankles.

The pillow is cooler on the far side, she dips her nose into the cotton, inhaling deeply.

The city is grumbling, she can her the wind trapped in its streets.

Close, in the sticky stillness of dawn’s rapid approach, she whispers to the little life inside her, imagines the feel of his heartbeat.

 _“Istifanus,”_ she whispers, those fragile letters.

Yusuf would be so angry if he knew she had already named him. Not to mention disbelieving.

She knows, though. He is her son. It will be a boy.

The baby cradled inside her is a boy, and that is his name. It must be. Of course it is.

She’s hasn’t told Nicks yet, either.

He’ll probably be angry, too.

.

.

Distracted by his own incautious curiosity, Dom misses Arthur’s arrival, their  _guest of honour_ in tow.

By the time Dom looks back towards the bar, Arthur’s already at it, the tall shape of him barely hiding the bulk of his broader companion.

Dom glances at Eames again. If his expression has changed, it’s too subtle a difference for Dom to read it.

He’s more than aware, however, of the charged, electric energy that is bleeding across the table. He can feel his own shoulders tightening, sensing some measure of Eames’ tension.

Arthur turns his head, spotting the drinks already awaiting them, and for some reason he scowls, before tapping his tagalong on the arm and gesturing him to the table.

David Ezra bears little similarity to the man Dom has been imagining from Arthur’s description.

He bears the expected ex-army bulk of his body. A soft layer about him that was probably all muscle ten years ago. He walks half a step behind Arthur, his hair cropped short and his movements nervous. His face is plain and wholesome.

It’s also ashy white, as if he had been overcome by a phantom of such uncontrollable dread it was all he could do not to collapse.

Dom is so bewildered by his visible anxiety, he’s almost surprised when both men reach their table.

“Ezra,” Arthur says in his familiar, clipped voice. “This is Dom Cobb, retired extractor, and Eames, forger. Cobb, Eames, this is David Ezra.”

Ezra makes no attempt to shake their hands. While hardly offended, Dom is nonetheless surprised by his reticence.

The two men sit, Arthur at the drink that matches Eames’ and Ezra in front of the coke, which he eyes with immense suspicion.

“Dark rum, I believe?” Eames asks.

There’s something less refined in his voice as he speaks, a hint of a borough of London that doesn’t belong in the Eames that Dom has known for nearly a decade.

Dom knows, then, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that he has unwittingly walked into a situation vastly more delicate than he realised. He feels keenly that he is among more sharks than he had anticipated.

Arthur probably hasn’t outright lied to him, he thinks carefully.

All the same, it’s perfectly clear he hasn’t been entirely truthful either.

“For God’s sake,” Arthur huffs a little too casually. “Ezra, enjoy your drink. Eames, stop.”

It’s sheer desperation, Dom decides, that drives him so readily into the old gloves of his extractor’s façade. Instinctively leaning into the table, hands loose around the glass Eames had pushed his way, he says in an uncompromising voice,

“Gentlemen, I believe we’re here for more important things than our drinks.”

The look Arthur shoots him is closer to grateful than annoyed.

Ezra’s is impatient, distrusting.

Eames doesn’t look at him at all. He looks at Arthur. It’s a sharp, surprisingly terrible look; Dom rather thinks he could live a thousand years and never understand how someone like Arthur could find even a hint of affection for the badger cruelty in Eames’ face in that moment.

Whatever it means, though, is absolutely none of Dom’s business.

“Ezra, Arthur tells us you’ve been experiencing black spots in your memory.”

Of course, Dom has no idea what Arthur’s told Eames. Nonetheless, he’ll be damned if he’s going to present anything less than a united front to this stranger.

Ezra seems to lose some of his nerves when he meets Dom’s eyes, empty of Arthur’s authority, of Eames’ hostility.

“Yeah – yes, I have,” he says.

He has a gruff voice, easy to imagine bellowing orders. That’s where his power was, Dom thinks; the weight of his commands had been his captaincy.

“Any behavioural discrepancies?” he asks.

Ezra glances shyly over his shoulder, his entire body crowding around his full glass.

“Sometimes there’s nowhere safer to talk than a busy restaurant,” Dom says in his calmest tone of reassurance, even throwing in a half-smile for good measure.

It perhaps shouldn’t shock him, how easy this is. Being the extractor, the investigator; the asker of questions. It’s a role he carved for himself, why wouldn’t he still fit into it?

He never claimed to be the most skilled extractor in the business without cause.

Ezra’s eyes are pale, a weak distorted shade and his mouth has a natural grimace to it that keeps a key note of handsomeness at bay.

Dom maintains as calmly reassuring an expression as he can. When it’s clear Ezra isn’t prepared to answer his questions yet, he changes tack.

“I think we need to establish a clear timeline,” he suggests in the collectively stubborn silence. “There’s no sense stumbling around in the dark looking for clues inside your head.”

He doesn’t intend it as a jibe. Arthur, sitting across the table from him, looks a little shirty.

“Arthur told me a little of the man you think is behind this,” Dom continues indifferently. “Aldman. He was interested in achieving inception?”

The lines around Ezra’s mouth carve themselves deeper into his face. He stares down at the bubbles of his drink, ducking away the attentions of the three men before him.

“He had a lot of interests,” he tells his rum and coke. “He had a lot of doubts about extraction theory. Saw it as unreliable. He thought it put too much power in the hands of the subject’s whims. All it takes is someone with a strong enough imagination and they can tell you kinds of lies, even inadvertently.”

Dom succeeds in holding back from rolling his eyes or suggesting this Aldman simply didn’t possess the necessary skill to disallow an active imagination from gaining too much ground. There are plenty of individuals who prefer sledgehammers to scalpels, both in the military and out of it. Dom’s met a number of them over the years.

“Inception risks a lot more variables than extraction,” he replies.

He’s not entirely sure Arthur has told Ezra they were the ones to achieve it, possibly the first ever to do so. Mostly, Dom hopes he hasn’t. With so many questions being asked, it feels dangerous to be getting noticed right now.

Not to mention, the one question simmering beneath all Dom’s cautious words; one Arthur couldn’t answer with certainty, one that Dom rather thinks Eames might be here to ascertain.

Who’s to say Ezra isn’t still working Aldman?

By Arthur’s own admission, he’s a prize Aldman will pay handsomely for. It seems foolish to disregard the possibility that there is nothing missing from Ezra’s head at all, that he is in fact only as much of an opportunist as most other people in this world.

“Aldman believed the key to getting what you want from anyone was to break them down inside their own head. He even thought you could turn a man’s loyalty. He tested his theories until one day, his operation backfired on him.”

Arthur’s grip on his glass is very tight. Dom watches him as closely as he can from the corner of his eye.

He’s sitting too casually in his chair, his expression is too lacking.

And in the spare moment Dom has to look at him, he sees Arthur’s eyes flit to Eames, a homing beacon.

Eames, who is so perfectly calm, a predator totally at ease. If it wasn’t for Arthur’s glance, Dom would think Eames was nothing more than politely interested in Ezra’s explanation.

Only, Arthur does glance at him, and Dom does notice, and it’s enough for the sprouting nerve endings of Dom’s doubt to take root.

Feeling only slightly guilty, Dom raises his eyebrows and asks with uncompromising directness,

“Who did he test these theories on?”

Arthur’s hand is bone white around his glass. Never, not in all their long years together, has Dom seen Arthur reveal a tell so easily.

Ezra, meanwhile, is retreating right before their very eyes. For such a large man, he shrinks away from Dom’s question surprisingly well.

“Soldiers,” he says, and his eyes are on Arthur’s drink, now. “Soldiers, and some prisoners.”

“And did it work?”

Eames’ voice breaks through the air like a needle through a vein. So delicate and yet so violent, nothing more than a murmur. Dom is more than certain his point man has stopped breathing.

Ezra looks up.

Dom is good at what he does. He’s an extractor; reading people comes with the territory.

He doesn’t see people the way Arthur does, the binary code of fact and fiction, a breathing dossier of statistics for him to figure out on a piece of paper.

Nor does he see them the way Eames does, a web of intricate details that are his to claim and manipulate, to manifest and imitate.

No, Dom’s understanding of other people is somewhere in the cracks between, a little of both. A distant shadow to be traced and a living, breathing puzzle to examine.

So, Ezra looks up. He looks up and for the split hair difference of an instant, Dom sees in his expression a terror and a hatred so large it fills the room with the toxins of its strength.

And when he opens his mouth, Dom sees not so much the twisting of Ezra’s mouth nor the icicles in Eames’ eyes.

He sees the white-knuckle squeeze of Arthur’s hand around his glass, and a panic in his face so sincere Dom only recognises it by his haphazard understanding of who exactly he is sharing a table with.

Ezra opens his mouth to speak, and Eames waits for his reply, and Arthur silently awaits a bullet blow, and Dom says before any of them can move a muscle,

“You are going to tell me, right now, right this very instant, why you are here.”

He says it not to Ezra, nor to Arthur, nor to Eames. He says it to the middle of the table, addresses their centre point from which they all might be struck by his demand.

Arthur looks at him, as young and hopeless as he has ever looked before in all their long years of friendship.

The other two men do not, which does not in the least surprise Dom. His hands are on the table, flat, unthreatening, and he looks back at Arthur, finding he does not have a way of communicating to him the truth of how angry and sorry he is in this moment.

Arthur, who has done so much for him, who worked twenty-nine hours without rest just to cover Dom’s reckless ass on a tailspin job in Guangzhou and who held his kids’ hands at their mother’s funeral; who drank half a bottle of tequila in Mexico City and whispered into the corpse cold night,  _I think I’ve been terrified for a very long time, Cobb._

If the people all around them are still speaking, Dom can’t hear them. He can only hear the rush of his own blood and the silence of how rapidly this conversation is imploding, how far into the abyss they are about to collapse if he doesn’t keep hold of the reins.

“Why are you here?” he asks again.

To his genuine astonishment, it’s Eames who answers first.

Not only that, he answers with something that sounds like it might be the truth.

“I’m not prepared to let this git fuck up our lives anymore than he already has.”

There’s a chance he’s talking about Arthur, Dom supposes, but it’s a small one. Of anyone at this table, Dom knows Eames is the most proficient liar; it would seem, however, he’s got the least reason to lie right now.

He doesn’t acknowledge Eames’ response, other than to turn his head a fraction of an inch away from the forger, as if satisfied by his contribution.

Ezra takes a loud breath.

“I need your help.”

That much is obvious. Before Dom can do anything, before he can even pick apart any traces of a lie in his voice, he continues.

“Perhaps I don’t deserve it,” he says, in a very even tone, as if these words have been measured and memorised, and have been sitting in the back of the teeth, waiting to be released. “But I’m asking anyway. I’m never going to apologise to you. I’m never going to be sorry. I did what I believed to be right. I would do it again if I had to. That’s the God’s honest truth.”

Dom purposefully doesn’t look at either of them. He doesn’t want to see whatever is lingering in Ezra’s pale eyes and heavy grimace; he doesn’t want to know what Eames thinks of the man’s confession.

The only person who matters in this room to Dominick Cobb is the man sitting across the table from him, dark understanding eyes full of anguish. The man who didn’t leave, not even when Dom tried to make him; who without fail has been with Dom on Mal’s birthday every year since her death.

He looks across the table at Arthur, who deserves Dom’s trust, who deserves his patience tenfold.

Arthur, who’s looking at Eames with an expression Dom recognises from Mal’s face.

.

.

They’re taking much too long. The bitch should be high as a kite, what with the amount of morphine lacing her system. Why hasn’t she folded already?

It’s different, working with mercenaries. They’re vicious and fickle and incapable of good sense.

Aldman can’t bring himself to truly respect a man whose loyalties can be bought.

Perhaps that’s where this obsession was borne from. How do you trust someone not to waver, when they might be bought, or blackmailed, or worst of all, simply might change their mind at a whim?

It’s the fanciful ones that need watching closest.

He checks his watch again. It’s been four hours here, on the first level.

Counterbalancing somnacin and morphine, it turns out, is a tricky business, one Aldman has little inclination to learn the equations for. He’s no chemist, is at the mercy of what Ling promises is the safest possible method for extracting from someone already pumped full of drugs just to keep the agony at bay.

It’s a shame, really, he thinks, as he looks at her, lying on a hospital bed, identical to her real body up above.

She’s pretty enough, there’s a delicateness about her that doesn’t quite match the resilience with which she’d battled her way out of the first dream they put her in.

If there’s one silver lining to the morphine, it’s how sluggish it has made her short-term memory retention. A few minutes on the second level and, according to Ling, she’ll promptly forget what’s up above. At least they’ll get a few goes to break through.

Aldman stands up, stretching his knees and elbows, swinging his arms back and forth as he paces around the room. Sometimes, in the dream, he still limps. It’s as if he can’t make his mind and body cooperate with the fact that down here, away from the constraints of his mortal coil, he doesn’t _need_ to have a pinned together kneecap.

After a few circuits of the spacious, ultra-white room, the stiffness loosens. He traces the smooth wall with one finger, his eyes on the floor, circling the girl and Ling and Mathis, all laid out on identical hospital beds.

He doesn’t _have_ to play babysitter. He could get one of the others to do it. It’s not as if he likes being stuck in a one-room dream for hours at a time.

The alternative, however, is being inevitably sucked back into the temptation of talking to the _other_ one. Sophie McLoughlin, _Olivier,_ her polecat manner and her corpse fresh eyes.

He wishes he’d gotten hold of her ten years ago, when he had real soldiers under his command, when he had all the toys in the world and not four favours and a hefty bank account to cover his tracks.

He’d have dug his fingers into her subconscious with relish, none of this treading catlike through the mind of a little girl who, Aldman knows, is simply too naïve to realise the danger she’s stumbled into.

Crashing cars and breaking the bones of mostly innocent little girls isn’t his idea of a noble cause, but needs must.

He looks at the girl, stands at the bottom of her bed and observes her puffy cheeks, her smoothed back brown hair. If she had any sense, she’d have turned on her heel and walked away the day she met Benjamin Hewitt.

 _Hewitt._ Whatever the fuck he calls himself these days.

It’s a matter of principle, is the thing. Hewitt did as he was told because he swore an oath to do just that.

And then, he turned around and shot his commander in the knee for his own sins.

Aldman hasn’t wasted much of his life lingering on regrets, but some have festered, infectious.

If he’d had even an inkling that Hewitt was still alive, he wouldn’t have rested, wouldn’t have fucking _blinked_ until the boy was twelve feet under and burnt to ashes, the very memory of him nothing but scorn and scars.

On the bed, the girl flinches, a crease of an expression fleeting across her face before she relaxes.

Aldman returns to his seat.

There’s time yet for that, the scorn and the scars. All he needs is to exercise a little patience.

.

.

When Arthur looks back at Dom, he’s pasty pale, breaths rapid and shallow in his chest.

“If Aldman’s behind this, stopping him is more important than anything else,” he says, sounding a lot bolder than he looks. His voice, though quiet, is rich with renewed confidence. “He might not have the military’s official endorsement anymore, but they aren’t going to stop him. He was too crucial to their dreamshare programme. Chances are, they still use what he gives them through less conventional channels.”

“What would it take to convince them to intervene?” Dom asks.

His list of military contacts doesn’t stretch tremendously far. It’s been a long time since he was a contractor and however far Saito’s clean slate got him, they were never likely to forget the scrutiny he was once under. There are few officers of any note he can think of who might lend even an ear to his cause, let alone a hand.

Arthur’s wry smile is painfully sympathetic.

“I defected. At best, they’ll ignore I’m still alive and let me go about my business. At worst, they’d drop me off at Aldman’s doorstep with a gift tag.”

When Dom tears his eyes from Arthur’s disappointed face, it’s to see Ezra also looking at the younger man.

“They might listen to me,” Ezra says, though he sounds thoroughly unconvinced. “I got an honourable discharge. There were questions, after Aldman was shunted, but the blame never fell to me.”

By the jut of anxiety in his voice as he says it, Dom does wonder if perhaps some of the blame _should_ have fallen to him. Nevertheless, it’s likely their best bet, if things go south.

The fact that Ezra chose to come to Arthur and not his military friends, however, is more than telling.

There’s a cruel quirk to Ezra’s mouth as he adds with callous mirth,

“I doubt they’ll extend the hand of friendship to a Canterbury Thief.”

For one startling moment, it seems like a bizarre confession. Until, astonished, Dom realises Ezra is staring at Eames.

Arthur closes his eyes, looking for all the world like this very moment, more than anything, will be the end of him.

The rest of the room, which had been all but silent to Dom, is suddenly a shattering battle of voices.

He looks at Eames, impassive and indifferent Eames, who is covered in bruises and carrying a fake military ID in his wallet. Who has seven threads of reasonably believable identities, who forcibly fits his way into any city he finds himself in; who has never given a single indication to care for the gossip of the likes of Canterbury.

“You?” he asks, and he feels embarrassed by his own astounded disbelief.

Eames looks impressed, perhaps at Ezra for saying it, perhaps at Dom for knowing what it means.

Underground dreamshare has always been a game of secret spillages, leaking like oil spots in a sea of rumours.

“Allegedly,” he responds with the air of one who has never in his life admitted to a single wrong.

Some final fraction of a jigsaw slots into place in Dom’s mind.

Arthur, his reluctance to admit to his military past. Aldman and his manic theories. Ezra, unapologetic and righteous. If Eames was among Ezra’s mutter-mentioned  _prisoners,_ and if Eames truly is Canterbury, he can only imagine how much Aldman must have enjoyed breaking into his head.

Canterbury remains by no means the wildest tale to reach the corners of the dreamshare community. It’s not the most atrocious, the most daring, the most heroic, nor is it the most fantastical. It’s still a good one.

All Dom knows of Canterbury is this: British Intelligence sent a group of agents out into the field. They bled them dry the way all agents are taught to bleed. Until, that is, five of them disappeared, a PASIV apiece. Within two months they had killed twelve handlers and operators, dropped three more into comas, and were said to be allying themselves with terrorist cells across the globe.

It was all a little too neat for Dom’s taste. The details were too obscure, too precise.

Nobody ever agreed on  _why_ they suddenly clubbed together and vanished. Nobody could say where they vanished to after their final domino piece fell.

In fact, nobody could really say what their final domino piece  _was._

Dom had entertained the rumours with as much humour and disbelief as the Beijing Trio and the so-called Operation Ocelot. Interesting, probably a little bit true, but mostly the work of dreamsharers getting too invested in their own mythology.

There’s an extractor called Kipling, whom Dom has never met, who is supposedly one of the Canterburies. Leon Douglas, a chemist Dom has bought somnacin from more than once, is said to be a Canterbury, too.

And  _Eames._

He’s never heard that one before.

A viciously inappropriate smirk tries to wrestle its way onto Dom’s face. He holds it back with some difficulty.

Arthur is now looking at Dom with large, doe eyes of worry. As if he thinks Dom is about to get his cell phone out here and now and call them all in.

That, more than anything, is the most convincing piece of evidence so far. If Arthur is afraid of Ezra’s revelatory accusation, it’s because he knows it’s true, in spite of Eames’ flippant disregard.

For the first time in what feels like hours, Dom glances around them. The light pouring through the windows has dropped a little. The tables are fuller than before.

The bartender, Joanne, is either on break or has finished her shift, nowhere to be seen.

“Well this makes a lot more sense,” he says, and he doesn’t mean for it to come out sharp and sarcastic, but it does.

Eames snorts, draining his drink and dropping the glass back onto the table. He yawns, catching it on his knuckles and looking awfully pleased with himself.

“I must say, all this clearing the air is doing wonders for my appetite. We should’ve done this years ago,  _Captain._  Another round, chaps?”

Ezra, caught between perturbed and distrustful, doesn’t respond.

When Eames moves to get up, Arthur whips out a hand, holding it so close to Eames’ face it looks a little like the movement was supposed to be a slap.

“Sit down, you  _asshole,”_ he snarls, before pulling out his wallet and going to the bar himself.

Dom lets out a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding.

Ezra’s shadowed eyes are flitting between Dom and Eames, measuring their reactions and clearly feeling untethered by being more than three feet away from Arthur, in the company of two men he has no reason to trust have his best interests at heart.

He’s probably right to be afraid.

After all, if half of dreamshare’s very own Canterbury Tales are true, Ezra’s on the wrong side of the table from a very dangerous individual, one who has every reason to want him dead.

“We’re going to have to trust each other,” Dom says, taking advantage of Arthur’s absence to pull both men’s attention solely onto him.

He doesn’t like the glitter of amusement in Eames’ eyes, diamond impenetrable.

“That’ll be a novelty, Mr Cobb,” he says lightly, much akin to the way he’d believed that  _of course_ inception was possible, in spite of all evidence to the contrary. “Maybe we should do some trust falls out on the grass.”

“You really are an asshole, you know,” Dom retorts, even as he laughs, breathless and relieved and still a little terrified.

He’s dizzy with the back and forth, his brain barely catching up with the pounding of his heart.

Eames tips his head sideways in semi-agreement.

It’s not that he looks any different, Dom thinks, in this new and harsher light. It’s only that Dom thinks he understands a little better why Eames is so very good at what he does.

What he thought was a fluke of talent, may in fact be something less easily defined.

Before he can voice any of these fluttering thoughts, however, or perhaps turn the conversation to something more purposeful, a very different thought is voiced to Dom’s right.

“You were dead,” Ezra says, with all the certainty in the world, as if he’d been the doctor on call.

It’s an abrupt statement, or at least, Dom thinks so. Eames is entirely unphased by the accusation. If anything, he looks amused by it. Leaning back even further with lion pride comfort, Eames surveys the man opposite him with a dangerously tranquil expression.

“Your faithful Lieutenant certainly thought so.”

There’s a pointed hardness to the way he says the designation; as if it were beneath him to use military ranks. Then again, it might just be scorn for the American pronunciation. Eames has made his feelings towards Americanisms perfectly clear over the years.

“I helped him get out of Kenya,” Ezra replies, which seems futile to Dom, petty even, the way his eyes dart to Arthur’s back, using him as a buffer even when he isn’t physically there to be one.

Eames snorts into the last dregs of his drink.

“Do you think I’d be here if I didn’t know that?” he asks.

Somehow, he manages to make it sound like a genuine question. Dom rather thinks, however, the real query hidden behind Eames’ smirk is:  _Do you think you’d be here?_

Before Ezra can brave a reply, Arthur returns, displaying his expert skills at carrying four full drinks at once, which is still one more than Dom has ever managed.

“Looking for a job, darling?” Eames asks as Arthur distributes the glasses and pointedly ignores him.

.

.

Lenna Rebane has never been one to show fear to a man with a bad temper.

Her father’s blazing fury is an eternal flame in their household; one that her brother inherited with relish. In fact, Lenna knows she too is more than capable of letting loose an anger that could scorch the earth.

She doesn’t, though. It’s such a wasteful effort. She has since learned to play the icy balm that shrinks even the wildest of fires.

When she was sixteen years old, with a man’s hand around her throat and his words hot and foul-breathed over her face, she had smiled and with only a slight tremor in her hands reached up to unclasp his fingers.

Lenna Rebane is not sixteen years old anymore – not that her father believes it.

It has been a few years now since Lenna was sixteen, and she has only gotten better at masking her anger and her fear with a layer of indifference as quilted as the snow that sits heavy on their roof over the winter months, catching all sounds within and without.

Just because she doesn’t show it, that doesn’t mean she doesn’t feel it.

Sinsee hasn’t been here long, this time. He’s staying in the apartment, at her father’s insistence, and Lenna has only snatched pieces of conversation with him in passing.

“My dear Lenna,” he had said last night, “You got taller.”

He has said it to her every time they met since she was twelve years old, and despite her best efforts the lilt of his Irish tongue still brings colour to her cheeks. She had adored him at twelve.

Now, the adoration is mostly gone, leaving behind a golden warmth like honey and wine and wood fires. She likes him, not enough to think about him when he isn’t around, but enough to have to bite down on her smile to keep it gentle when he grins at her.

Sinsee’s arrival is always abrupt, and usually welcome. Her father thinks better of him than he’ll ever admit to, and her brother still looks up to him with astounding gratitude.

This time had seemed no different. Sinsee had arrived, their father’s mood had brightened like vodka swilling in the bottom of a new glass, and Lenna had had an excuse to go to the apartment to bring him some fresh supplies.

Until, that is, forty minutes ago.

She kneels on the rug in the apartment, her hands unthreatening by her sides and her eyes downcast in a false display of submission that really is just a better way to glance sideways at Sinsee, who is still coughing out the blood dripping into his mouth from his cracked nose.

The man standing over them has one gun in his hand, another tucked into a holster under his jacket.

When he apologised to Lenna for the livid bruise on her face, he had sounded gruff, perhaps English.

Sinsee reaches up to wipe some more blood from his top lip with his right hand. The thumb on his left is swollen, perhaps dislocated.

“Even if Rebane is happy to hand me to you,” he says to the stranger standing over them. “He’s not going to let you walk away after hurting his daughter.”

Lenna knows this to be true, and her grin is tight over her clenched teeth. She risks a look up and is caught off guard by the way the man smirks, one thick eyebrow raised.

Then, from the far-left corner, close to the door, she hears her father’s voice.

“Lenna, come here.”

Her head shoots up, dizzy hurt beneath the bruise on her cheek, and she sees her father, his pained and furious face.

She glances at Sinsee, who is staring at them both with his blue eyes wide, horrified.

“Nikita,” he says.

Lenna’s father shakes his head, gesturing to her, and she stands up tall. The man with the gun looks just as remorseless as he did when he struck her with the barrel.

“Go,” he says quietly. “This doesn’t concern you, Miss Rebane.”

“Lenna,” her father says again, and through the hard line of his demand she can sense the reeds of what might just be his anxiety. It is only once she is standing next to him that he speaks again, more confidently. “I am sorry, Sinsee.”

Sinsee’s blood-smeared face twists unpleasantly.

“You’ll stamp all over Hugo Schevner, but you’re afraid of _him?”_

Lenna closes her eyes, feeling an ache of disappointment. There are many things she has seen her father tolerate from friends over the years, but an accusation of cowardice is not one of them. She senses her father steeling himself beside her.

“Take him and go, if you must,” her father says to the stranger. “I am not part of this.”

The man nods, business-like, the face of a poker player. He’s got a thick carpet of beard that hides most of his mouth.

“There’s one more thing I need to do,” he says, but he is looking at Sinsee as he says it. “Then we can go.”

Sinsee wipes another drip of blood out of his mouth.

Lenna feels her father’s hand on her shoulder, possessive and protective.

With his free hand, the man reaches into his pocket and pulls out a phone.

Sinsee coughs into his palm, looking up as he sits back on his heels, defeated.

“Leon,” he says, and he soundly suddenly exhausted.

The man, Leon, makes a loud shushing sound, shaking his gun airily at Sinsee. Lenna feels her stomach muscles tighten, and without meaning to she reaches up to grasp her father’s fingers.

Leon, gun swinging absently, eyes hard and hawkish, types in a number and holds the phone into his ear. He stands waiting, but there’s no answer.

He types it in again, or perhaps it’s a new number, because this time he barely presses call before he gives up.

Sinsee has finally stopped coughing, and has tipped his head forward, cradling his nose in his hands.

Leon types a third number into the phone, holds it up to his ear, and waits.

This time, someone answers.

Leon makes a face that might, in some circles, be considered a smile.

Lenna’s grip on her father’s fingers tightens and she allows the way he pulls her, ever so slightly, closer to him.

Holding the phone much more purposefully than the gun, the man, Leon, with his nasty grin and impenetrable gaze, says,

“You have thirty seconds to explain to me why I have, in the past two days, killed two women who knew your name was Nicks, found your fucking love nest in France, been forced to burn two of your oldest aliases tracing you back to both Calvin and _me,_ and tracked Robert cunting Sinclair halfway along your tail to the arse end of the Baltic.”

There’s a pause, during which Leon’s face becomes splashed with a deep, angry shade of red around his cheeks and throat.

“You had one rule, Eames. Do you remember what it was? It was that _Nicks_ stopped existing. It was that you gave up that sorry excuse of a life you had before _we_ rescued you. So. I think it’s time we had a chat about the terms of our arrangement. Namely, where you are, and whether you’d prefer to eat your own gun, or get your fucking head chopped off like your sorry excuse of a sperm donor.”

Lenna feels the warmth of her father’s side against her back, and the strength of his hand. She sees Sinsee’s terror as he stares at the man flicking a gun to and fro like a conductor’s baton.

“Come, Lenna,” her father whispers in her ear. “This is not for us.”

She tries to stay, tries to _want_ to stay, if only because Sinsee has never looked frightened before, the same way her father has never sounded anxious.

She doesn’t stay, though. She can’t.

Her father is right. This is not for them.

She can only hope that this thug with two guns remembers that, before he pulls the trigger.

.

.

Some of the colour has returned to Arthur’s cheeks.

When he sits back down, he seems to keep more of his height, although it appears to have little advantage over Eames’ determinedly lazy slouch. He looks at them, all three, with dutiful fortitude.

“We have two immediate problems,” he says, clasping his knuckles together in favour of sipping his drink, which he seems to have bought out of principle instead of necessity. “What’s going on in your head,” he nods to Ezra, “And the likelihood that Aldman has gotten hold of Stacey Farris.”

The name jolts like a gut punch.

Dom stares at Arthur, open-mouthed.

Ezra seems confused by the name, his eyes flitting between Arthur and Eames with some measure of calculation that’s sharper, more intelligent than his shoulder hunch mumbles so far.

Dom, for his part, tries not to replay in his head how easily Arthur had evaded his question on the phone last week.  _Do you know who she is?_

It’s all too clear now that Arthur not only knows who she is, but has at least some vested interest in her fate.

As, apparently, does Eames.

“Have you talked to Saito?” Dom asks.

Eames throws him a cutting side glance. Arthur shakes his head.

“He doesn’t want to get wrapped up in this,” he dismisses.

Dom can’t help but wonder if Arthur is holding Saito at arm’s length now, in the hope that he might yet be a final port in the brewing storm that lies ahead. It isn’t the worst thought in the world. In fact, it might even be a small comfort.

“We can’t do anything for Stacey,” Eames says, though his dismissal is weak at best, undermined by the low octave of his vowels around her name. “They won’t get anything out of her anyway. I vote we crack on with the sleeper agent here and wait for our inestimable architect and her ravishing boyfriend.”

“Her boyfriend?” Dom scoffs, while Arthur rolls his eyes, his lips pressed tightly together and Ezra starts to speak, only to be interrupted by Eames.

“Did he not tell you whose  _company_ she’s keeping?” he asks with a lewd grin. “Arthur disapproves, of course. I happen to think there’s a lot to be said for having a point man around, though.”

Before Dom can fathom exactly which point man Ariadne could possibly be interested in, Ezra repeats his spluttering accusation.

“Just how many people have you invited into my subconscious?” he demands.

“As many as I think is necessary,” Arthur retorts through gritted teeth.

“I’m not a sleeper agent,” Ezra adds waspishly instead of responding to that implication.

“And I’m not Canterbury,” Eames replies with a saccharine flash of a smile.

Arthur’s scowl darkens.

“You aren’t getting anywhere near my head,” Ezra seethes under his breath, pointing a finger directly at Eames’ face only to pull back, still glancing around, as if they aren’t yet three decibels quieter than anyone else in the clattering, music thrum room.

Eames clearly has no such qualms about behind overheard. He leans hard into the table, a snarl in his grin as he snaps,

“You couldn’t pay me enough, sweetheart. I’m not here for you.”

“Guys,” Dom says, pushes into it heavy, as much authority as he can muster over two scrapping tigers, but even as Ezra opens his mouth Eames’ entire frame goes rigid, and he pulls a vibrating phone out of his pocket.

All traces of his lax equanimity are gone.

He stares down at the buzzing phone, deaf to Arthur’s very quiet whisper of  _Eames?_ Blind to the three intently curious gazes on him.

He’s glaring down at the number on his phone with such a measure of distrust, his firework splash of fury at Ezra seems utterly inconsequential in comparison.

“Eames,” Arthur says again, firmer.

Eames blinks, and the phone keeps vibrating.

He answers, and when he puts the phone to his ear, he keeps his eyes on Arthur’s hands like rope to an anchor.

“Yes?” he asks.

Then, Dom sees something happen that he’s mostly sure he’s never witnessed before.

Not in the back of a speeding Honda with his blood leaking into the seats, or on a second level dream when two projections had him by the throat, or even in Robert Fischer’s mind when Limbo hung beneath them all as a cavernous, looming threat.

Eames panics.

.

.


	14. Interlude: Olivier

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friends,
> 
> Thank you thank you for sticking with me! I love hearing from you, and I hope very much you continue to enjoy the story! 
> 
> There are a couple of points here that will make more sense if you've read the previous stories in this series. It's not vital, but it will help.
> 
> This is quite a quick one in comparison to the last couple, but there'll be a new chapter soon to follow....
> 
> Yours,  
> LRCx

.

.

When she met him, face to face, he was twenty-one years old.

He called himself Eames, even though his friends had called him Nicks, and when she figured out why, her heart beat faster for the love she bore for her own mother, long embittered.

She chose Olivier at random. Or, as close to random as she could manage. Her grandfather always reminded her of Laurence Olivier. That was it. That was all. A fickle nostalgia only she would know of.

Sophie McLoughlin’s grandfather was nothing like Laurence Olivier.

But Eames, he was only twenty-one. He was a boy. A boy, not terribly younger than herself but a boy nonetheless, ravaged with grief that had cracked the skin of his nose with lines of coke and wasted out his cheeks to concave curves. He was pretty, and he was sad. A tiger skin laid out on a hearth, a predator reduced to decoration.

When she met him, his chin wobbled and he wore a necklace that didn’t belong around a twenty-one-year-old boy’s neck.

She handed him her gun and he took it, shaky suspicion clogging his throat.

“If you want to,” she said. “You can kill me. If that’s what you need.”

Tears dripped down his cheeks like oil on canvas, silent, terrible stains.

“I want to kill you,” he said, long-suffering hitches in his shuddering breaths.

Olivier nodded, just enough to be genuine.

“You can,” she promised, and a fragment of her heart hoped he would. Little half-orphan, his vowels of Kensington and his consonants of elsewhere. “Or, you can come with me.”

He blinked, and from the ocean of his torment there broke free a hurricane.

She knew, then, he wouldn’t kill her, however much he wanted to.

“Come with me,” she said, ever so quietly.

And he did.

He’s still the best forger she’s ever seen, and she tells herself that’s not her fault.

.

.

Sophie McLoughlin did not intend to spark a mystery.

She had no grand intentions of legend and intrigue.

On her sixteenth birthday, as July waned and the summer holidays loomed, Grandad Mac came to visit.

Grandad Mac’s visits were always terribly exciting. He wore real suits on special occasions. He doted on Sophie, unlike everyone else who doted on Claire far more. He worked for the _government,_ doing what, he never really explained.

Mam and Grandad Mac didn’t get on. Entire family annals could be dedicated to the disagreements Mam and Grandad Mac had over the years.

But on Sophie’s sixteenth birthday, there were no disagreements, because Mam promised to hold her tongue.

They all gritted their teeth, even Claire, and after cake and candles, Grandad Mac said,

“Little Philosopher, come here.”

Sophie always loved that name. _Little Philosopher._ He said it so confidently, as if he knew it to be true, as if she were as wise as her name.

“How do you fancy working with me this summer?” Grandad Mac asked, and the funny thing was, he asked it like she might possibly say no. Didn’t he realise the alternative was stacking shelves at the grocery shop on the high street?

“Yeah!” she cried, bursting with pride, and even Mam cracked a grin at her delight.

Claire, of course, was furious.

“You never asked me!” she despaired, tossing her auburn plait back and forth, crimson spots high on her cheeks behind her freckles.

“No, I didn’t,” Grandad Mac replied, which was perhaps unkind, but Sophie only laughed even louder than the cheer of her candle-blown wishes.

Grandad Mac’s eyes twinkled. He kissed her cheek with a whiskery peck and he made her promise to work very hard.

It was mostly filing paperwork, in the end. Six weeks of stapler blisters and papercuts.

Except, of course, for Thursdays.

.

.

Sophie had earned and exercised her saviour complex years long before she met the boy called Eames.

By then, she’d accepted her atonement would never be absolute.

Only, she looked at that boy, twenty-one years old, with a weak, knowledgeable grip on the gun she handed him, and she knew she could save this one. She could do right by this one.

.

.

When Lucas Aldman grabs her the first time, it’s sheer carelessness on her part.

She’s in Santiago, resting up after a job that took more out of her than it would have done ten years ago.

Her period has just started, for the first time in six months. It’s not as if she’d forgotten what it felt like, but the visceral gnawing in untouchable parts of her body is unexpected. It’s like being twelve all over again, holding out her fingers in front of her to inspect with frowning curiosity.

In another life, maybe this would all be a plague upon her thoughts, this change, this pause, but it’s been a relief. Olivier’s always rather felt that women who are on the run should get extra credit for dealing with their ovaries on top of everything else.

It’s been nice, not worrying. The _pause._

She’s in Santiago, resting up. She’s standing in the shower, distracted by the blood smearing down her legs, sliding thick and red into the plughole. Her hair is plastered uncomfortably down her back, and her womb is making itself known for the first time in so long, she’d almost forgotten what it felt like.

There are no sanitary products in her flat, of course. She’s gotten careless, in more ways than one.

She reacts quickly when she hears the smash of the front door breaking in.

Not quickly enough.

She’s out of the bath in a splatter of limbs, the water spraying into the tiles and her hand sliding down the back of the sink shelf to retrieve the gun hidden there. Gets through three bullets before they’re on her.

She’s still soaked, suds in her hair, blood on her legs, naked as the day she was born. They’re ill-organised, but they have the numbers to make up for it. It’s possible she gets one in the shoulder with her gun before the back of her head smacks against the doorframe. Before her face hits the floor and the hands around her ankles drag her out into her living room.

She gouges her hands into calves and her heels smack into stomachs and then she’s starfish on the rug and she might feel shame, if she weren’t immune to it. If she hadn’t been inoculated against men’s vitriol a long, long time ago.

Her wrists are twisted, her heart spins wild, and she laughs at the man in the doorway and says,

“I’ll happily bleed all over you fucking car, mate.”

She’s soaked, and still hurting inside, and she’s tired, ever so bloody tired.

“Get her some goddamn clothes,” the man in the doorway says, and he shoots a disgusted look at the men holding her down.

Olivier hadn’t realised quite how low her standards of men were until she felt the rush of her instinctual gratitude at those words.

Repulsed by her own sorry relief, she wrenches on the underwear, jeans and t-shirt she’s tossed with such vigour she hears something rip and proceeds to scowl at the man in the doorway anyway.

There are eight of them. Ten years ago, maybe she’d have chanced it, and no doubt died for her arrogance.

“Can I help you?” she asks, flicking her soaked hair up out of her t-shirt collar and twisting it into a bunch around her neck.

“Yes,” the man replies. He’s quite young, with thick eyelashes and a thin moustache, olive skin and slicked back hair. “Lucas Aldman wants to talk to you.”

She doesn’t give in to the buckle of her knees.

She walks out of her flat with her head held high, chin jutting out, and she doesn’t flinch, not even when she hears them smashing her shelves right off her walls.

.

.

Eames isn’t the first person to belong to her. He’s not the first waif or stray she grasps by the hand and leads into the event horizon.

She loves him, the way she should have loved Claire, or Robbie, or Helen.

He’s impatient, ill-tempered, and he looks at her sometimes like he’s expecting her to knife him.

“Why are you afraid of me?” she asks, because she knows it’s not for any reason that might make sense.

He never tells her. He keeps that one for himself.

.

.

On Thursdays, in the summer, when she is sixteen years old, Sophie McLoughlin learns how to build dreams.

A man called Rackley teaches her first. He’s a weedy bugger, with a prickly manner but a kind enough face. She’s very good, very quick.

“You work for my grandfather?” she asks.

The look Rackley gives her is astonishingly venomous.

“We work together,” he corrects her, in a tone she recognises from across the dinner table back home.

Sophie nods, and her mouth curls around her smirk.

Rackley is an architect. That’s what he calls himself. On their first Thursday, he asks her if she’d like to be an architect, too. She tells him, _I don’t want to go to university._

She doesn’t, in the end, but she still becomes an architect.

.

.

When Aldman grabbed Eames, twelve years before he grabs hold of her, Olivier almost lost it.

Leon told her: _With any luck, he’s already dead._

She threw a knife at him, then. When it missed his shoulder by two inches, they both pretended that’s what she meant to happen.

.

.

The second time Lucas Aldman gets her, she’s driving six over the limit and there’s a plane ticket in her pocket she’s planning to give to her shotgun passenger.

Her passenger, the sensible and smart-mouthed Ariadne Collins, who has been building dreams for four years and yet somehow hasn’t learned her limits yet.

Olivier is predisposed to like her. She’s naïve and sharp and she strongly believes in her own convictions. Ariadne Collins, who hasn’t quite learned how to conceal her fear but who knows enough to conceal her cleverness.

“What’s Arthur’s real name?” Olivier asks, and Ariadne squirms, so distracted by her own ignorance that she doesn’t notice it’s a question Olivier doesn’t have the complete answer to, either.

 The car has a loud engine, the road is pretty new. The glide of the tyres on the tarmac a satisfying roll of purrs. Her grip on the wheel is relaxed, her eyes on the sedan that's possibly following, only one car separating them.

She’s not careless this time. She’s so, so careful.

It doesn’t matter. Her Chevrolet Malibu is no match for the truck that smashes into it.

They roll and scrunch and she feels her femur snap like a candy cane in a child’s hand.

White hot, it sears through her, the pain and the screams of her passenger, and for one incredibly brief moment she hopes the splinters have torn her femoral artery, that her blood will spray out across the shattered windscreen and then her mind will finally, for the first time since she was sixteen, be truly, utterly safe.

.

.

If she could have chosen, she wouldn’t have called them Canterbury Thieves. There’s something static in the name, reducing them singularly to that time and place, to what their government deemed their greatest atrocity.

It doesn’t touch the rest of it, as far as she’s concerned. She carries guilt inside her the way she once carried a child, terrified and possessive and cautious, letting it grow, feeding it her own love and life force.

Only, they cut the child out, and they stitched her back up. Why couldn’t they take out the guilt, too?

She named him Jacob, after her grandfather.

He’ll be a young man by now, at university, perhaps, working hard and making friends and falling in love, all the things his mother never did right.

She doesn’t wonder if he remembers her. She knows better than to torment herself.

.

.

The second time Lucas Aldman grabs her, she wakes up in hospital and imagines she can hear a baby crying.

It’s the smell, she realises later. It’s not the first time she’s been in a hospital since Jacob was born, but it’s the first time she’s been _in hospital,_ in a bed under thin sheets, with an IV and an oxygen tube and the loud beep of her own vitals in her ears.

As if she were underwater, with the sea in her lungs, she struggled to break the surface of consciousness, and the ringing wail of an infant stung at the corners of her eyes and in her eardrums. She coughed up the ocean and the salt burned in her grazes.

Once her eyes are open, it’s difficult to close them again.

“You think you’ve got Hadley and Hewitt tucked away nicely, don’t you?” Lucas Aldman asks her, after an interminable, indeterminable stretch of time. Twelve seconds or forty years.

(Sometimes, they are the same thing.)

Olivier knows who Hadley is, of course, which leaves Hewitt, the missing puzzle piece she hadn’t managed to scrounge up. Hewitt, which must be Arthur’s real name.

Ben Hewitt.

Discovering his given name had been, not an accident, but entirely unintentional. The by-product of Arthur’s oversharing during those rushed days in a hospital in Vienna, intolerant of each other’s lies and one eye on Eames' comatose body the whole time.

 _That’s my real name,_ Arthur said, and he sounded so haunted, as if he had forgotten he wasn’t supposed to give that up so easily.

Olivier can’t help the weak twitch of her facial muscles, their pathetic attempt at a grin, picturing the young Ben Hewitt, disobeying his Major at every turn.

He suits Arthur better.

“You can’t hide them forever,” Aldman promises her, and in her heart her birdlike hope chirps, _Oh, but how I wish I could._

She would fold them both into her shadow, secret them away where they might be safe from harm. She would scorch the earth clean of men like Lucas Aldman, men who look at the wonder of the PASIV and see only their greed reflected back, who look at the talent of bright, driven minds and see only the profit of their unravelling.

When she was sixteen years old, a man called Rackley taught her how to build dreams.

Someone else taught her how to tear them down.

It was men like Aldman who forced her to choose one path over the other. If she was going to have to choose between building wonders and tearing down monsters, there was only ever one option she could live with.

When sixteen-year-old Sophie first saw a PASIV, she looked into the future and saw an escape from the terminal diagnosis of being who her parents thought her to be. Soon, it will have been thirty years since that moment. She’s hasn’t yet decided if it’s been a trio of decades well spent.

Thirty years well spent to lead her here, now, where she lies in a hospital bed, choking on the smell of bleach and bacteria, a few metres away from her charge, and from her captor, sluggish in the thick grip of drugs.

The Nurse, McLaren, with her dainty concern and her tremulous care, comes in unexpectedly.

She’s tired, grey with the strain of her work. It’s the end of her shift, perhaps a double. She stares at Ariadne’s bed, and at the men flanking it, all of them strung up to a device Olivier doubts has been explained to her.

“Hnng,” Olivier coughs around a slice of grateful sympathy for the nurse’s worry.

McLaren’s expression breaks into creases of confusion.

“I haven’t got long,” she says, hoarse, before proceeding to fiddle with Olivier’s cannula.

It takes a moment for her to realise that McLaren isn’t actually _doing_ anything. It just might look like she is, to anyone peering through the porthole window.

“How’s the pain?” she asks for the umpteenth time.

Olivier licks her lips with a sandpaper tongue.

“Four,” she says.

“Out of five or ten?” McLaren asks with a sparkle in her eye, and despite herself Olivier feels the faintest bubble of laughter stir in her gut. Not enough to break free, but it lingers on her lips.

McLaren’s hands are cool, soft, practiced.

“It’s my day off tomorrow,” she says in an unexpectedly chatty manner, reaching over to inspect the bandages on Olivier’s shoulder.

When she leans in, Olivier can see a faint birthmark on the hollow of her throat, and smell the hours of her toil underneath a powerful layer of aloe anti-perspirant. There's a Star of David on a silver chain tucked into her uniform, out of sight.

“You’ll have someone else give you your morning meds,” she says in an apologetic tone. “Don’t worry, it’ll probably be Carly. She’s good. I’ll be sleeping, finally. Maybe running some errands. I got a letter from my cousin in Albuquerque. I should probably write one back. I don’t think I’ve handwritten a letter in years.”

McLaren has a soothing voice, one for lullabies, the stuff of doves and mothers. When she catches Olivier’s eye, she’s smiling in her irises irrespective of the tough set of her mouth.

The offer is between them, suspended like a declaration and a threat, a promise between prisoners.

Olivier’s mouth wobbles around a rejection, then acceptance. Eventually, she closes it again without speaking.

McLaren’s eyes dart down, three shades shy of embarrassment and two degrees separated from frustration.

“Maybe,” she continues, shrugging. “What do I know? Not a whole lot.”

Her self-deprecating laughter is almost as painful as Olivier’s raw nerve endings, the way it scrapes through the sterile room. McLaren shakes her head, stepping back and rubbing her cool fingers together.

“Thank you,” Olivier whispers, as cracked as her lips.

McLaren shrugs one shoulder, her eyes darting around the room to avoid looking at the other bed.

Just as she turns her back, the terrible fear of seeing an opportunity waste itself rears ugly and monstrous inside Olivier’s chest. It’s as powerful and incongruous as the way she had felt as she handed the boy called Eames her gun and told him to shoot.

McLaren, her kindness a very special brand of bravery, the way she turns her back slowly, dejectedly, disappointed by her own ineffectiveness.

“Nurse,” she croaks, and McLaren flinches back around, a wide-eyed, wonderful swing of her willowy limbs.

“Yes?” she asks.

“My sh-shoulder,” Olivier says, and with her better hand she makes an apathetic gesture. “I think the stitches are caught.”

For a moment, McLaren blinks.

“Oh,” she says, understanding sparking over her, and she hurries back to her patient. “Of course, let me check.”

Just as before, she goes to Olivier’s right-hand side, forcing her to lean over her body to untuck the bandaging and rearrange it.

Her mouth close to the nurse’s clavicle, hidden out of sight, wincing in spite of the gentle treatment, Olivier swallows the saliva suddenly pooling sickly under her tongue.

“Sanin. Pharmacy. Makurdi. Careful.”

It’s all she manages between steadying, nauseous hitches. McLaren lets out a long breath that brushes over Olivier’s cheek. As she draws back, Olivier can see fear pinching the corners of her eyes.

It’s reassuring, in its own way. Olivier hasn’t much left to trust, but fear is reliable. Fear gets things done in a way that safety rarely does.

A lock of McLaren’s hair brushes over her face as she stands straight again, a professional gleam in her eye.

“I’m afraid we can’t give you anything more for another two hours, yet,” she says, resting a hand very briefly on her patient’s upper arm in a comforting squeeze.

She swishes away with the same anxious exhaustion with which she’d entered, steeped in the air of a nurse who is longing for her own bed. Whoever is standing guard outside the door, they don’t stop her when she passes through.

Olivier watches the door swing shut, swallowed up in the stifling return to silence following McLaren’s abrupt presence.

There is an incredibly small chance that she’s misread McLaren, that the nurse has in fact been bought. There is an equal chance, of course, that she has misread McLaren, and the nurse isn’t up to the task despite her offer.

What’s important is the rest of the percentage. The fraction of possibility that Sanin will receive word in time, that he’ll be able to help. That he’ll even want to.

It’s enough, she thinks, to hold some puttering candle of hope to. It has to be.

Across the room, the limp form of Lucas Aldman twitches one hand, rippling the IV line that connects him to the PASIV.

Olivier watches, for a while, but when none of the dreamers stir again, she lets the icy numb of sleep take hold. There’s not much else to be done, now.

It’s McLaren’s day off, tomorrow.

.

.

When she met him, face to face, he was twenty-one years old. He called himself Eames, even though his friends had called him Nicks.

She asked, but all he said was, “I was supposed to be a girl. Mum didn’t know what to do with a boy.”

According to the information Leon and Ellis had managed to dig up on him, his real name was Elijah.

“If you want to, you can kill me,” she told him. “If that’s what you need.”

What he _needed,_ she didn’t say, was four hot meals, a decent night’s sleep and to lay off the PASIV for a fortnight.

He was twenty-one years old in reality, but he was almost twenty-five if dreams counted. And whatever the academics said, dreams _counted._ Of course they did.

He didn’t kill her.

.

.

Night comes, bringing with it medication that she tucks under her tongue, and more she can’t refuse when it’s fed into her IV.

Whatever this nurse is being paid to keep her blinkers on, it’s enough to keep her cool and methodical. She doesn’t even look Olivier in the eye as she checks her vitals.

“Pain?” she asks in a bold, thumb tack tone.

“Four,” Olivier replies, but it’s more of a lie this time that when she'd answered McLaren.

The nurse nods, and is out of the door with only the briskest check of Ariadne, blind to the men slumped around her.

Night creeps into the room like demons, claiming what they can.

Olivier’s eyes are heavy, and the pill has half dissolved in her mouth by the time she spits it out onto the floor, ready to be found in the morning and no doubt earn her another lecture.

Snakes coil through the lines of her weak muscles, her cracked bones.

Until, without warning, without ceremony or so much as a flicker of anticipation, Ariadne wakes up.

.

.


	15. TEN

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friends,
> 
> Your comments bring me a great deal of joy, even on sad days. Thank you :*
> 
> Yours truly and affectionately,  
> LRCx

.

.

She wakes up, and for the space between two heart beats, she’s still drowning.

All at once, the sucking shrieking scrape of oxygen pours down her throat, the wet of her eyes is only the tears of surprise that cling to her eyelashes in dewy droplets.

 _“Fuck you!”_ she shouts, or at least she tries to. Her mouth is full of untreated wool, her tongue prickling with needles and despite the powerful painkillers throbbing in her body, when her limbs automatically clench, she’s overcome with a sudden bleating agony.

Beside her, a man is springing to his feet.

Lucas Aldman, his face a livid shade of scarlet that smells in his apple cheeks like bruises.

 _“Calm her down!”_ someone shouts, and she might be yelling, or crying, or dying. Her breaths are harsh as lungfuls of saltwater, rattling and sloshing inside her throat and the brittle cavity of her chest.

This, this is it. The plunge of a knife in her diaphragm, the plummet of her lax body from so high above that the ground is in future tense.

There are hands, hands holding hers, holding _her._

Unwanted hands, comforting and frightening. Fingerprints on her skin that she writhes against, only for their grip to tighten.

The fluorescent lights are sheer and blue, she can taste blood where she’s bitten clean into her cheek and she thinks perhaps that voice is her sister’s, that she’s here, that she’s come.

 _(Of course you can, Addy,_ she said, and she meant it.)

Ariadne opens her eyes, opens her throat, and from her erupts an almighty, terrible scream.

.

.

Years ago, before Arthur came back, before Eames fell down a rabbit hole. Before _Come home with me?_ and _Of course I forgive you._ Before it all stopped getting in the way of the important things, like the stolen watch fetish and apricot danishes and clunky antique furniture.

Before all those things, Arthur woke up damp and jelly muscled in an apartment in Patras to see Eames standing in front of the open window, a slice of moonlight cutting like a blade across his left side. The meat of his arm and shoulder splashed with crude lines of black ink, the vulnerable flush of his throat, and a look on his face of such anguish it was as if he were watching the extinguishing of the stars.

“Eames,” Arthur said, not a scolding or a question; an offer. A reaching of words like a rope tossed over a chasm.

Only, at the sound of his name, like the summoning of demon, the expression on his face vanished. He did not flinch, nor did he startle; it was an indefinable thing, that shift, a swan into an osprey.

Arthur saw it for what it was: the truth, cloaking itself in a misinterpretation.

“Yes, love?” Eames replied, not missing so much as a beat.

He was a fastidious liar, always, even to Arthur in those days.

It is not an entirely dissimilar spectacle, Arthur can’t help but notice, when Eames answers his phone in a crowded hotel in Oregon and promptly loses most of the colour of his cheeks.

Dom sees it. Arthur can tell.

There’s a transparency to Dom these days that speaks of academia and bedtime stories, not unforgiveable by any means but a nuisance all the same. If Ezra did not spot the change in Eames’ demeanour, he’s still sharp enough to read it second-hand in Dom’s surprise.

The phone rings, and Eames answers, and Eames is out of earshot before Arthur’s straining ears can catch anything more than _Leon, you need to calm down and talk to me, you psychotic –_

Arthur watches him leave, which is hardly a new habit; his limp, while not prominent, is still very much there. His shoulders are buddying up with his ears.

Before Arthur’s brain can properly file away where to place worry over Eames’ damaged patella in relation to worry over Leon’s latest psychosis, Cobb-the -Extractor has quite suddenly replaced Dom-the-Father who had been sitting across from Arthur moments earlier.

He has transformed, and it is as unnerving as it is comforting.

“Leon?” he says, tacking a pointless question mark onto the name. “Leon Douglas?”

“Another one,” Ezra says, and Arthur sips his martini to deny his hand the opportunity to punch him.

“He’s been looking for Stacey Farris, too,” Arthur says, because quite frankly at this point, he has no idea how well-read Ezra still is on his Canterbury Tales, but he doesn’t like what he’s heard so far.

Technically, Eames has never outright _said_ Olivier and Leon are Canterbury Thieves. He’s never had to. The details of Arthur’s last military job are as deeply ingrained into him as his sisters’ birthdays and his dad’s service number.

“Popular girl,” Dom mutters, and Arthur smirks.

“Shouldn’t we follow him?” Ezra asks, his eyes on the door Eames has by now disappeared through.

Arthur prods at his glass, skidding a condensation mark along the table.

“Someone should,” he agrees, his eyes briefly meeting Dom’s.

It’s been three years since Dom’s _retirement,_ but it would take three-hundred from them to stop being anything but natural partners.

Dom nods in careful understanding, takes a final sip of his lager and gets to his feet. He drifts casually through the room with the air of one who’s considering the oyster of his world, inconspicuous and calm, drawing not a single pair of eyes towards him as he leaves.

Truthfully, Arthur would much rather be following Eames out of the room. There are questions he needs to ask Ezra, though, and he rather thinks Eames will see Cobb less as coddling and more as harassing for information. Not that he’s likely to respond any better to either perceived slight.

And yet.

Once they’re alone, he fixes Ezra with a look. Before he can say anything, however, Ezra cuts in, elbow on the table, knuckles to his lips.

“Don’t even start,” he snaps defensively. “You did that on purpose. What else did you expect, throwing me a goddamn curveball like _Rupert Hadley?”_

It’s been a while since Arthur heard that name. The first piece of Eames he ever knew; _Rupert Thomas Hadley,_ in black and white print on a heavily redacted British Intelligence file, the origins of which were far above Arthur’s, above _Lieutenant Hewitt’s,_ paygrade.

“His name is Eames, now,” Arthur replies, petty enough to relish the repulsed look on Ezra’s face.

Ezra lifts his drink with a heavy arm, taking large gulps to wash the taste of surprise out of his mouth.

“How did you find him?” he asks, looking for all the world like he hopes never to hear the answer.

Arthur’s not so kind.

“Accident,” he replies truthfully. “I got pulled back into dreamshare on the other side. Eighteen months later, I met Eames the forger.”

A chuffing laugh scuttles out of Ezra. He leans weighty into the table, close enough that Arthur can smell his aftershave.

“Did you know he was a forger when we had him locked up?”

Arthur blinks in reply, holds his own impassive look of boredom. He doesn’t have Eames’ craft for lying, never has and probably never will. Nonetheless, he does have some that the Englishman has never quite mastered, and that’s the ability to offer up precisely nothing.

When Eames is pretending not to be frightened, or angry, or amused, he does so by offering up something else instead. He’s a performer in his bones and odds are, when Eames looks cheerful, he’s probably seething.

Arthur, though. Arthur’s the son of a military stone giant and an investigative journalist. He knows how to vanish everything but the nose on his face if he wants to, a lie not of creativity but omission.

“I don’t think Aldman’s been inside your head,” he says.

He says it the same way he held a pillow against a man’s face and pressed down hard not yet two weeks ago.

He says it not because he necessarily believes it, but because there’s a chance he should.

A measure of fight loosens from Ezra’s tightly scrunched face. He’s shocked, which tells Arthur nothing, and panicked, which tells him even less. Was he always so transparent?

“What aren’t you telling me?” he asks, to Ezra’s apparent bewilderment.

His pale eyes dart to and fro, seeking backup he won’t find. It’s harder than ever to remember the degree of genuine terror the man used to inspire in Arthur as a young Lieutenant, concealing every side of himself but the fraction of military bearing he learned from his father.

Ezra’s breaths are quick, his mouth askew. He looks, perhaps for the first time, truly desperate.

“I’m not your enemy, Arthur,” he says.

Arthur grimaces, takes a mouthful of drink, tasteless with distraction.

“That doesn’t make you my friend,” he replies.

Before he can say anything further, or better scrutinise the look on Ezra’s face, his phone trills with a message.

_107 now_

He looks up at Ezra’s face, considering. Dom wouldn’t summon him for anything less than vitally important information, yet it still takes effort to yield. Whatever Eames has fashioned into an acceptable explanation for Dom, Arthur knows better.

Leon has put the fear of God in Eames, and Arthur will be damned if he lets Ezra see anything even hinting at vulnerability in any of them.

“Arthur,” Ezra says. It still sounds alien in his voice. “Six months ago, I was planning a family holiday to Disneyland and thinking about adding an extension to the house. I’m supposed to be at my mother-in-law’s right now, getting criticised for my potato salad and teaching my kids how to not suck as baseball.”

For all of its meaninglessness, the yearning of it is real. Ezra’s head ducks shyly towards his drink. Arthur can barely see him for the cloud of misery he’s surrounded by.

Arthur pockets his phone.

“Let’s go,” he says, dropping some spare bills on the table as he gets to his feet.

Ezra follows, almost topples his chair in his haste to get up. There’s a discomfited look of conflict in his face, but there’s no mistaking the gratitude in the way he claps Arthur’s shoulder with a cautious hand.

.

.

When the girl wakes up, Olivier feels her neck spasm with the force of turning her head.

It takes two rushing nurses and a stumbling orderly to keep her from rebreaking anything important. She’s terrified, yelling what can only be slurred insults of base treachery.

Olivier watches the struggle, helpless and furious, a nail bent out of shape, every muscle in her body, whole and ripped, tense with the desire to reach out.

By the time she looks away from the speckled pink and green of Ariadne’s cheeks, she can’t see Aldman anymore. There’s just the empty chair and the tangled IV line, the octopus arm of the nurses and the stretch of the blankets straining.

Olivier holds her breath, and it aches in her mouth, like the barrel of a gun against her tongue.

.

.

By the time Dom finds Eames standing next to a poorly trimmed potted fern in the lobby, his phone has disappeared from sight and his hands are stuffed in his pockets. There’s a look of sheer repugnance so clear on his face it’s difficult to see any hint of the fear that had taken hold of him back at the table.

Eames doesn’t react to his approach, not that Dom would expect him to. He’s always seemed to clock an intruder before they make their move.

It was that vigilance that made it so easy to believe he was ex-military. It’s only now he’s been corrected that Dom realises just how easily he’d swallowed the lie.

To see it now, Dom thinks he better understands just how carefully Eames has crafted the character he’s been inhabiting as long as Dom has known him.

He comes to a stop barely shy of too close, and Eames’ jaw tightens. His gaze is ten-thousand miles from this place.

“News?” Dom asks coolly, one hand in a pocket and the other swinging by his side.

Eames glances at the bustling reception desk, licks his lips and says,

“Your room’s closest?”

With a nod, Dom reaches to take Eames’ elbow, as if to lead him away.

For a moment, he thinks Eames is going to revolt. He’s a long line of steel wires and when Dom’s fingers take hold of his arm he very nearly pulls away.

At a tilt of Dom’s head, though, the forger acquiesces, and even exaggerates his limp a little as he lets himself be shepherded down the corridor marked _101 – 121,_ away from the prying eyes of the lobby.

It’s odd, in its own way, having Eames in such close proximity, even giving up some portion of his weight to lean into Dom’s offer. The forger has always had a poor sense of personal space, but he’s rarely toed that line with Dom over the years.

They’ve never exactly been _friends._

Dom doubts very much that’s likely to change in any drastic way, but he knows the least he can do is not take advantage of Eames’ distraction to wheedle answers out of him, no matter how much he’d like to.

It’s not far to Dom’s room, enough time for Eames to regain his usual con-man’s composure by the time the card-key flashes green in the lock. Dom can’t help feeling relieved; he’s far more familiar with Eames’ complacent arrogance than anything else.

He gestures for Eames to take a seat at the long desk, which he does silently, with his hackles still high as a splashed cat.

Pliancy doesn’t suit him at all.

With only a cursory look around the room, Eames grabs the small notepad bearing the hotel watermark from near the phone, the black biro next to it, and starts writing down a list of words without further ado.

At first, they seem meaningless:

_Wrocław, Debrecen, Meryl Schultz, Tallinn, St Petersburg, A. T. Samberg, Hana Andreyev, Adonis Buch., Durrës_

Dom stands as close to Eames’ shoulder as is polite, reading with nonplussed curiosity. Eames doesn’t pause in his notes, the words spilling out of him as if he’s been memorising the list for this very moment all his life. The very air is brittle with nervous energy, which Dom is too wary to break first.

Until that is, Eames moves onto a new page and starts with:

_Leon DOUGLAS EE/COX SH/HIRST WE/FARADAY O_

_Iain Banks NSW_

_Andrew Mahoney_

“Leon Douglas,” Dom says, latches onto the name for a second time with greater vengeance. “He’s the one that called you?”

Eames ignores him at first, in favour of adding three new towns to his list.

There’s a vein throbbing at his temple, and his handwriting is getting progressively larger the more he writes.

“Yes,” he eventually admits, ripping the pages from the thin pad and leaving them on the end of the desk in plain view, presented like gallery specimens for inspection.

He pauses, then. His pen hovers over the paper as if it’s an execution order, and when he tilts his gaze in Dom’s direction there’s impatience in his quick, bloodshot eyes.

“Cobb,” he says, his tone hardening with a demand.

He flexes his jaw and Dom takes a bemused step back, so that the paper is no longer in easy sightline.

Dom watches from the corner of his eye as Eames jots down another, much shorter list before tearing this page out. Instead of placing it with the others, he folds it in half and places it in the breast pocket of his shirt.

“You know Leon?” he asks, then, without comment for his secrecy.

Dom makes an affirmative sound, running his finger down the first list with intrigue.

“Not as well as you,” he surmises. “Chemist. Canterbury, right?”

At his brief, questioning look Eames smirks, tipping his head in a half nod of acknowledgement.

“What did you make of him?” he asks instead of replying outright.

Dom tries to picture him, his rough-cut face, his square jaw covered in a thick beard; those needle sharp, calculating eyes.

“Smart, efficient,” he said, before adding after a moment’s deliberation, “Ruthless.”

Eames’ smirk doesn’t falter, though his distaste is clear. He’s sitting lax in the chair, his loose spine at odds with the tightness of his shoulders, and the way he’s turning the pen over and over in his hands.

“He’s got Robert Sinclair,” he says grimly.

For a moment Dom almost asks, _Who?_

Then he remembers. The point man. The one brought in with Ariadne, the one who…

“God damn,” he laments, sinking to sit on the foot of the bed, his mind turning that prospect over with no short measure of alarm, not to mention dismay.

“Not sure God’s up to the task,” Eames drawls. He pushes back against the chair, cracking his neck with his hand hooked around his chin. Eyes on the ceiling, he remarks with a sigh, “Why do I never learn?”

Dom, elbows heavy on his knees, quirks his brow.

“Learn what?”

Eames heaves a deep, exasperated chuckle; scrubs a hand over his face, pressing deliberately at the fading bruises over his cheekbone.

“It can always get worse.”

Dom laughs morosely, a dry tickle in his throat.

“Ain’t that the truth,” he snorts, pulling out his phone and texting Arthur.

As he presses send, he realises there is just one thing he needs to say, while he still has Eames’ solitude.

However, Eames seems to expect it, because he’s wearing a wry look of anticipation.

When Dom hesitates, he cuts in, a tone all too similar to the one he’d used on Ezra back out in the bar.

“It’s between me and Arthur.”

There’s not one iota of room for disagreement in the way he looks at Dom, then. They’ve never been friends, that’s for sure, but they’ve rarely misunderstood one another.

Dom gives a small salute. He can’t argue with that.

“I think I underestimated you, Mr Eames,” he replies.

At this, Eames chuckles darkly.

“Why Dom,” he exclaims, mockingly sincere. “That’s my greatest skill, you know.”

Dom laughs, too. He can believe that one.

“I take it I shouldn’t make the same mistake with Captain Ezra.”

Eames’ shifting response isn’t promising. Elbow on the desk, he taps the pen nib against his palm. The folds of his third list are sticking out of his pocket.

“Not for a second,” he replies. “He might be playing the wide-eyed civilian well, but he was a force to be reckoned with a decade ago. I wasn’t entirely kidding about him being a sleeper. I do believe he’s no fanatic, but he’s still dangerous.”

Before Dom can respond to his startling sincerity, there’s a knock on the door. Two rapids taps.

He moves quickly to open it, ushering Arthur and Ezra inside with swift beckons of his hand.

“What is it?” Arthur asks before he’s even come to a stop, eyes darting to the papers on the desk, probably understanding them better than Dom. “What does he want?”

It’s incredible, really, that Arthur ever managed to conceal his attachment to the forger. Dom’s sure he’s not imagining the way he’s practically straining with the effort not to take a step closer to him.

Arthur picks up one of the lists, skimming it. His eyes find all three men before fixating on Eames.

“Does he know anything more about Stacey Farris?”

“Arthur,” Eames says before Dom can unpick that sentence for further clues. “He’s got Sinclair.”

There’s a pause, during which Dom sees a hundred possible reactions flit across Arthur’s expression.

“Sinclair,” he says, hollow, doubtful. The way Dom once heard him say _inception_ across a cramped airplane table.

“Arthur –” Eames says again, as if he knows something everyone else doesn’t.

Before whatever this is can reveal itself, however, Arthur does the one thing Dom had not expected him to do.

He turns on his heel and walks out of the room, snatching up the second list as well as he leaves. The door slams behind him, a terrible finality to the _thud_ of wood that leaves his absence potent as a black hole in his wake.

“The hell,” Ezra says, an empty gesture as he stares bewildered at Dom and Eames, perhaps alarmed to find himself alone with them.

Dom, however, doesn’t have time to placate the man’s paranoia.

“Does Sinclair know where we are?” he asks.

Eames nods, dropping the pen with force onto the desk and pushing his forehead against the flat of his hand.

“Shit,” Ezra mutters.

He’s standing near the doorway, caught between worlds. Useless as the sentiment is, Dom can’t help but agree with it.

“What does he want?” he asks.

“My head on a pike,” Eames says, and somehow makes it sound more reasonable than it should. “And to rescue Stacey Farris from whatever rabbit hole she’s fallen down.”

That’s something at least, Dom supposes. While not entirely oppositional ideals, there is some degree of conflict in those intentions.

Killing Eames wouldn’t stop him from finding Farris, necessarily, but it would be easier to do with Eames’ help.

“Is there one of those he wants more than the other?” Dom asks with a hopeful smirk.

The amused look Eames gives him tells Dom he’s had similar thoughts.

“I’m afraid it’s hard to tell with old Leon. He’s a bit of a loose cannon. And he really doesn’t like me all that much.”

 _Can’t imagine why,_ Dom doesn’t retort, although it sits citrus sharp on his tongue.

“There’s no chance he has Ariadne, is there?” he asks instead.

“No. If he did have her, he’d happily have bragged about it.”

It’s a small relief, but even that much has powerful force against the rippling undercurrent of fear that has settled in his chest.

He perches on the foot of the bed again, as Ezra leans back against the wall, a safe distance from either of them.

“When’s she due in?”

“Arthur says tomorrow,” Eames replies.

He sounds more than dubious about it. Dom frowns.

“You don’t think she’ll make it?”

The window outside is darkening, city lights glittering through the thick line of trees.

The artificial light from the ceiling is unforgiving.

“I think it’s suspect she hasn’t checked in with Arthur,” he says. “And I think Arthur’s very good at denying a problem even when it’s right in front of him.”

Eames doesn’t so much as blink as he says it, and that more than anything stings. It takes every ounce of resolve in Dom’s bones not to react; there’s no mistaking the accusatory disdain in the forger’s voice, nor the meaning of his words.

It’s unfair, perhaps even cruel, but he can’t call him out on it. Eames’ eyes are coal pits in a stern, uncompromising face.

They’re not friends, and likely they won’t ever be.

 “What would Aldman want with her?” Dom asks.

“Are you kidding me?” Ezra snorts, taking a futile step off the wall with frustration. “Hewitt nearly destroyed Aldman’s entire operation on account of one prisoner. He’s sentimental and he’s reckless. Aldman knows if he can’t find Hewitt, he just needs someone he cares about.”

Dom, out of nothing more than professional courtesy, doesn’t look at Eames when Ezra has the audacity to actually _point_ at him as he spits the accusation in his general direction like a wasp out of his teeth. If there’s merit to Ezra’s words, he won’t find it in a highly-strung forger whose fuse is crackling.

It’s odd, he thinks, that someone perceives Arthur as _reckless._ It’s one of the few things Dom would confidently say he’s never been.

Then again, Ezra’s not talking about Arthur, is he?

He’s talking about a man called _Hewitt._ Someone Dom has never met. Someone whom Arthur no doubt had every intention of keeping buried forever.

“And just how would you know what Aldman is up to?” Eames asks with a challenging curl to his lip.

“Oh, piss off,” Ezra retorts, more boldly than om has heard him yet. “I worked with the man for years. I know how he thinks.”

“People change.”

“Not that much.”

“Where’s Arthur gone?” Dom asks before Eames can retort.

All for the best, considering the mutinous look on his face.

He turns his scowl to Dom, gesturing around the room.

“I’ve been sitting here the whole time, Cobb. How should I know?”

Dom opens his mouth, and is none too sure what suggestion he has for Eames but luckily before he can voice it, his phone starts ringing. Both other men cut short their sniping to stare at him, and Dom lets out a short, snorting breath.

“Arthur,” he answers gratefully.

Any hope for a real explanation are, unfortunately, soon dashed.

 _“Go to the front desk,”_ Arthur says briskly in lieu of a greeting. _“Say you’re with Ludlow. They’ll show you into one of the conference suites.”_

And with that, the line cuts.

Dom lets out a deep sigh. He wonders idly if this fabled _Hewitt_ was as much of an asshole as Arthur can be.

“Conference suite,” he says. “We’ve been summoned.”

He half expects Eames to have a response to that. To his surprise, however, Eames simply pushing himself to his feet, gesturing with his hand for Dom to lead the way.

Dom does, relieved to be able to step out from between the two men.

There’s no possible good end to this forced partnership, Dom can’t help but think. It’s far too much to ask that they’re not going to be at each other’s throats within a day.

Still, that’s a bridge that can’t be pre-emptively crossed. As he leads the way down the corridor to the lobby, Dom takes a fortifying breath.

He can hear Ezra’s shuffling, even tread behind him, Eames bringing up the rear half a pace slower. The reception is as busy as ever, and from across the room the clanging chatter of the bar remains loud. When the front door opens, it brings with it the scent of rain and cigarettes.

Dom approaches the desk, wearing his friendliest smile for the receptionist, although perhaps it’s a little worn, because her brow crinkles with doe eyed sympathy.

The long night ahead looms.

For the best, he thinks. He doubts he’d have been able to sleep much, anyhow.

.

.

Eight thousand miles away, a car crawls through the outskirts of Tallinn.

The driver yawns into the back of his hand, his teeth cutting bluntly into his wrist and his eyes blinking wearily.

Slumped in the front, his passenger is curled towards the window, a goose egg blossoming violet across his temple.

.

.

Gasira Rahal was born in a squatter’s sanctuary, the third storey of a not-quite-condemned building that clung like a barnacle to the outer suburbs of Bradford.

Her mother, Leta, was unmarried, unattached, unprotected.  Her father, a man whose featureless face would haunt Leta’s nightmares all her live long life.

Gasira was conceived in Runyenjes, born in Bradford, named in Hull. She did not call any place home for a long time.

After a long, sleepless night, she gets up with the eager sun and her loyal worshippers. She pours water into the soil feeding her plants along the windowsill, makes some soothing jasmine tea, and takes it to the sun room.

The sun room, her workshop, her bolthole.

 _The fumes alone will be the death of you,_ her husband said the first time before calling for backup and getting air vents and breathable skylights fitted amidst the stained glass majesty of the light peppered ceiling.

It took months, and by the time the last of the plaster was cleared away, the workers paid and the windows tested, Gasira could only say,

“My love, now we can never move home.”

Yusuf had looked at her with such new, forgiving eyes. He had said, his mouth to hers in honest adoration,

_My little dove, why ever would we want to?_

Now, she sits in the sun room, her bolthole, still cool in the early hour. It will be close to midday before the walls are scorched, fractions of colours splitting like atoms across the paintwork.

She sits on her stool, her legs spread comfortably, so that her sandals strain between her toes, and her dress stretches around her knees, while her gentle belly swell leans into the canvas propped in front of her.

The first layers are dry, coats upon coats of crimson and azure and faintest opal green. Circus colours, her childhood, detailed with scriptures as a holy temple, the words of a text Gasira treasures, to her rebellious mother’s great shame.

There are animal shadows, the phantoms of laughless clowns. The boy with the horse stick and the woman with the rich, warbling voice.

Pencil in hand, scratching shyly over the thick, bold point, she maps out the constellations of the tented sky. Stars and silks, a lonely trapeze with frayed rope that will not swing again.

Gasira draws from memory and imagination, they intertwine under her cautious touch. Ice cream flavours melting and horse shoes burning the straw.

The jasmine tea is a dispersed perfume in the stale room, filling the cracks in the paint, the threads in the rug.

Beneath the reconfigured vanity desk, one of the cats dozes, too full no doubt of chubby mice to demand anything more. His patchy quilt coat is splotched with unnaturally bright, tacky colours.

He’s gotten into her colour sets again.

A loose grin on her face, Gasira slowly etches at the canvas with her dark grey pencil, the scent of jasmine tea and the snoring of the cat for company.

As she works, fingers of sunbeams creep tentatively into the window panes in the ceiling, bleeding colour stains into the very top of the west wall.

She draws her shapes, her intricate figurines. She sips her tea, as it gets colder and colder.

The morning breaks into some semblance of a reasonable hour, and Gasira flinches at the creaky crack of the door opening unexpectedly.

“Sorry,” Yusuf murmurs, his head turtle hunching into his collarbones as he slips the door closed behind himself.

“You could learn a thing or two from Fennel,” Gasira chastises warmly, indicating the snoozing cat under the desk.

Yusuf rolls his eyes fondly, moving swiftly across the room to join her. He places his hands on her cheeks, so that his thumbs only gently press into the feathers of her lower eyelashes. He kisses her mouth, then the very tip of her nose, before squatting down to kiss the crown of her belly.

Of course, this conveniently puts him at the ideal height to reach for her jasmine tea and help himself to a sip.

“Hmm,” Gasira says, her fingers fluffing at the curls of her husband’s head. “Good morning, husband.”

“Good morning, wife,” Yusuf teases in return. “You did not sleep well at all.”

This is about the politest way he has ever managed to find to inform her that she looks terrible. Gasira laughs, rich and melancholy, before nodding.

“There’s a lot to do,” she says, because it is the truth, although that is hardly the reason for her sleeplessness. There is always, has always been, a lot to do. That is the nature of things.

Gasira takes her husband’s hands, pulls the cup to her mouth and drinks, before kissing his knuckles, first right then left. They’re warm, roughened by chemicals and sandpapered by sunshine.

“I have to get to the shop,” Yusuf says without pushing, clutching the tea between them like a secret. “Will you be alright?”

“Oh, I’ll try to manage without you,” Gasira replies, rolling her eyes and pushing the back of one hand dramatically to her forehead. “Perhaps I should make sure Nicks didn’t get lost in transit.”

Yusuf grumbles something disbelieving under his breath. He puts his hand to her taut belly button, then returns the cup to the table and stands. He looks at the painting, and he smiles.

“It’s very good,” he tells her.

“Have a good day,” Gasira tells him, and he bids her the same before leaving.

As the door shuts behind him, Fennel makes a yowling grunt, padding out from under his shelter. His ears, far too big for his little face, are perked up like radar dishes.

“Good morning, precious thing,” Gasira greets him, as his tail flicks to the right and he trots to her ankles to rub his head all over them. Her fingers tickle his neck, and she feels his purr in the bones of her feet.

“We’ll be just fine,” she tells him, and the life inside her.

 _Her son,_ she thinks with brave faith, and cannot refuse the smile that spreads across her face, as bright and warm as the sunlight through the roof.

She returns to her painting, working well into the morning. Until the heat of the day melts the dry puddles of colour, and the cat claws hungrily at the door.

.

.


	16. ELEVEN

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friends,
> 
> This chapter got hella out of control, so I've cut it in half and will post the other half as another chapter when it has been sorted.
> 
> A slightly cheeky disclaimer: there is a conversation in this chapter that would possibly occur in Swahili if I'm being totally true to character - _however_ while my research skills work on the odd phrase here and there, I'm not fluent in Swahili, not even vaguely conversational, which means I'd be Google translating, and I'm just not disrespecting the Swahili language like that. So, I'm going with the fact that one of the speakers in the conversation is native English speaking, and therefore would speak English in their own home...
> 
> Thank you so bloody much for sticking with me, for your kudos and your comments. As ever, they keep me going - or at least, convince me I'm not going wildly off the deep end on this terror train...
> 
> Love and happy thoughts,  
> LRCx

.

.

The dial tone mocks him. A hollow sound, radio wave laughter that he recoils from.

He calls again, but nobody picks up.

Through the door, he can hear the murmur of voices tightly wound, strung like the bow of a violin.

It’s strange. He’d thought he’d be used to being afraid by now.

Like when he was thirteen years old, the way she looked at him and saw everything he’d hidden like it was painted on his face.

And those years that passed by, never once forgetting.

He calls one more time, but it rings to nothing in his head.

.

.

He wakes up, jolted and shivering.

He wakes up, forehead to the window, a numbness in his fingertips and an ache in his knees, cramped in the front passenger seat of a car rolling on new tyres over old road.

“–the hell?” he groans through an exhausted yawn.

The driver lets out a hum of sound, distorted through the fog of what might just be a concussion. His vision swims before him and when tries to repeat his question with a few more syllables, it comes out as a gip that bursts in the back of his throat.

His head, blinding, and his wrists ripped up, swollen around the string binding them.

“You’ve got an hour or so before we get there,” the driver says, his grip on the wheel loose, assured. “Have you made up your mind?”

Sinclair blinks, dazzled by the fading light. The car is quiet, electric motor and good suspension.

He watches Leon’s hands on the steering wheel, watches them carefully, as he’d watch a wolf in the snow.

He feels for the goose egg on his head, the prickle of pins and needles in his palms and thumbs.

“I’ve got time that you don’t, piggy,” Leon says with a whistle in his teeth. “Do you know where Eames is holed up?”

His throat is dry, his ribs ache, and the swirl of countryside through the window is making him nauseous.

“Hmm?” Leon asks with a pushy snarl, blinking at the rear-view mirror like a curious child.

Sinclair closes his eyes, lets the pain in his fingers crawl through him like fire ants up to his elbows.

“Yes,” he replies, as quietly as he dares.

“And where would that be?”

 _The Antarctic Coast,_ he’d like to say, if only to spite this murderous bastard.

But he can’t. He can only take a deep, painful breath and say, shy as the sun through the clouds above them,

“I have one condition.”

Leon’s eyes are full of smiles, sharp enough to draw blood.

.

.

She’s staring up at the ceiling.

Her mouth is open just a little, her breaths rapid and timid in her chest, out of sync with the flashing pulse rate on the monitor by her bed.

Olivier watches her.

Whatever the nurses gave her, she’s listless, which is a far cry from good, and infinitely better than the wretch of fright she’d been when she woke up several hours ago.

There’s a wet line from the corner of her eye to the tufts of her hair, cutting a shiny stream across her temple. If she’s seeing anything in the blank shadows of the ceiling, they are known only to her.

Olivier talks to her.

Just a murmur, a low voltage current of words trailing like wisps of candle smoke through the air between them.

“…which is when _I_ told him, ‘That’s not how you milk a goat unless you want to lose a few fingers’, but he just carried on…”

Olivier tells her stories.

They are true stories, in their own way. Wrapped up in second-hand mysteries, new names, old dates.

There is a constant sound of whispering fortunes, history rewritten, just for her, in this very moment.

Olivier tells her about a pig farm in Yorkshire, a gentleman’s club in London, an abandoned chemical factory in the outskirts of Belfast.

It’s not clear whether Ariadne is listening; whether she can understand the words, follow the plotless meandering of Olivier’s sentences. She keeps talking anyway, just in case. Just because.

“That’s when I gave him the rubber gloves, but he still had the two comb cages and he didn’t want to put them down after what happened with the hives…” she says, and Ariadne blinks.

Another tear rolls down the track of its predecessors.

Olivier tries to pull over to the side, her leg protesting painfully at the twist. Her words lose shape, mangling up in her mouth around a gasp.

For a moment, there is silence. Olivier takes a cool, careful breath before continuing.

“…she wasn’t even licensed. I told him about the Tesco bag in the boot, but he was too pre-occupied by the hives in the road…”

Once, before Olivier was Olivier; before she cut loose the chokehold of the government collar around her throat, she was tied to a table while a man dislocated her fingers one by one, and did not hide his pleasure in doing so.

She recounted, in detail almost as excruciating as the slow dislocation of her hands, the tale of how she cheated in her physics O-Level, and how sorry she was for doing it.

By the time Leon, who was not Leon then but Andrew, arrived, she had given up nothing but her fellow cheats at St Margaret’s Secondary, and had almost lost her voice in the process.

 _When God was handing out bullshit, that girl got in line twice,_ her mother used to say.

Olivier tells Ariadne about the journey through _here,_ all the way to _there._ The _them_ she met, the _that_ they did.

“…that’s when we called Eddie – he’s the one with the rubber gloves, if you remember – and do you know what? He still had the bloody goat in the van! Absolute tosser.”

Ariadne blinks, and there’s a very slight twitch in the corner of her mouth.

Olivier swallows, trying her best not to get ahead of herself.

“Yeah, you laugh it up,” she says casually. “Just wait until you get stuck at the Serbian border without identification and a bee farmer with a grudge to bear. See how much better you do.”

The corner of Ariadne’s mouth twitches again.

Through the semi-darkness, it’s hard to track any movement of her eyes. Olivier tries to see, but between her own exhaustion and the dimness of the light from the monitors and the porthole of the door, she can’t tell.

She daren’t say anything too overt, in the high likelihood they’re being listened to. Instead, she lets out a small, audible yawn, then starts in on the one about the bookshop above the sex club in Paris.

 _When God was handing out resilience, that girl queued twice,_ her grandfather said, once.

She’s done her best to earn it, since.

.

.

Several things happen at once.

Several things, and they all make sense, in time. They happen all at once.

There’s the way Fennel scampers back into the studio, his tail bottle brush thick and swishing angrily as he claws his way up to the table full of potted flowers half-shrivelled with thirst, smelling of sweet plant rot.

And across the house, how someone bangs very loudly on the front door, a series of heavy _thumps_ that surely rattle the door on its hinges, if they can be heard from the studio.

There’s the sharp, tight pain that clutches Gasira behind her ribs, causing her to drop her paintbrush on the rug, wet flecks of watery azure splattering over her bare toes.

And, in the same moment, her phone rings.

It happens very quickly, at the same time.

Gasira looks across the room first, to Fennel’s large ears flat against his little head as she presses her hands breathlessly to her straining ribcage.

Then, she looks at the phone lit up on a nearby stool. From this angle, she can’t see who’s calling.

Thirdly, she looks to the open door of her studio.

The knocking stops for little more than a breath of resolve, before starting up again.

Gasira gets to her feet. Her mouth is dry as tea leaves, a tickle in her throat. When she walks to the door, Fennel lets out a disapproving hiss, which she gives him a stern look for.

There’s a fluttering in her chest, the trapped wings of a cornered hummingbird.

The banging gets louder as she treads carefully between the sturdy walls of her home, and with it, her heartbeat rises.

On the landing, she stares at the door, her breaths caught in the staccato of the knocking. A demand, and a torment. She shouldn’t answer it.

Only, that copper bright memory, one she can’t ever erase. The way those knuckles smacking the wood had escalated in the house, when she was eight years old, crouched in Josie’s wardrobe, until eventually they had just smashed the door down.

Rigid fury so righteous, it’s a destructive force and she’s no match for it, nobody is.

Her fingers only barely tremble when she reaches to turn the lock of the door. The knocking stops and perhaps so does her heart.

It’s a reflex, the protective way that her hand presses in a definitive curve around her vulnerable belly when she opens the door.

There’s a man on the other side, one who was clearly not expecting her. His eyes are wide, his shoulders stiff, and his gaze flits rapidly between her face and her stomach and the empty hall behind her.

At eight years of age, yes, she had been no match for the intruders at her home; there is more at stake, now. She realises, as the moment swells between them like a straining balloon about to burst, that she has not come so far to falter now.

“Can I help you?” she asks coldly, one hand on her belly button and the other on the edge of the door only half open.

The man has a counterpart, three feet behind him, who if anything is even more thrown by her presence than the first man. Both of them are casually suited, layered enough to possibly be concealing weapons, not so well dressed as to stand out.

Gasira looks them over with less than covert disdain.

The first man clears his throat. He’s broad, with heavy furrowed eyebrows and short black hair that matches his beard, which is covering a weak jaw.

“Yusuf Rahal –” he says with authority that might have frightened her, at one time.

“– is not here,” she finishes decidedly, cocking her hip with an impatient huff, which she learnt from her mother when men were not giving her due credit.

“Is he –”

“He’s away on business,” Gasira says, and finds herself hoping that the men have enough chauvinism between them to assume a man would not share his business with his pregnant wife.

Undoubtedly, they would have gone to the shop first.

If they are here, it’s because Yusuf was not there. Or, at the very least, he did not want them to know he was.

Dread crowds her, bites into the icy calm of her exterior; she has to dig her fingernails into the door, where the men cannot see. The pain in her ribs flares up again.

She shifts her weight. Yusuf would not let them come find her alone if they meant her harm. He would not let _anyone_ find her.

Not unless –

“Where is your husband?” the first man asks, while his partner takes a less than subtle step closer.

Gasira squares a look at him, feels a sickly hatred for him, for both of them.

Who do they think they are?

She has seen the worst of hearts in her time, yet somehow, she remains occasionally shocked by the despicable nature of her fellow men.

“His business is his own,” she says in a hard, unforgiving tone. “Whatever it is you want from him, you won’t find it here.”

The second man takes another step, and there is no mistaking the violence of the way his fingers curl into his palms.

Gasira’s breath catches, a tiny gasp of sound. She cannot prevent the way she flinches backwards, nor the contorted fury that replaces it in an instant. She looks at the first man as she spits,

“I would invite you in, sir, but you’d have to leave your dog outside.”

The man frowns, glancing over his shoulder.

Seeing his companion closer than before, he bats him away with a hurried flap of his hand. When he looks back to Gasira, he’s embarrassed, or at least very good at seeming so.

“My apologies for disturbing you,” he says, sounding oddly sincere for the demanding way he had battered at her door. “Tell your husband that we wish to speak with him.”

He offers her a small business car she had not previously noticed in his hands. She takes it without looking at it, though he seems unoffended.

He’s not a local; she cannot place his accent, which seems all too deliberate for her liking.

Gasira nods stiffly, her jaw clenched to hold in a more brittle farewell, and promptly glares at the first man until he bows his head and backs away from the door.

The second man is reluctant to follow. He stares at her for a long, awful moment with such intent, she is not entirely convinced she manages to contain the tremor in her bones.

Still, she stares back, and does not shut the door until both men have long disappeared from sight down the street.

Once she is alone again in her hallway, she finally looks at the card.

It’s thick, good quality off-white card. Embossed on one side are the details of a pharmaceutical company, including the address of an office in Nairobi. She doesn’t recognise it, nor the boxlike logo in the top righthand corner.

When she flips it with a flick of her fingers, she’s surprised to find something else written in light grey pencil on the back.

_Sanin compromised_

Gasira stares at the words, playing them over and over so many times in her head that they soon seem nonsensical.

Her thoughts swim through the honey thick disbelief that clouds her.

She’s abruptly, wholeheartedly overcome with terror. It shakes in her limbs, in her lungs, stifling her.

She stands in her hallway, only half lit, paralysed by the heady realisation she had no idea where her husband is.

Worse yet, maybe, she does not know if she can even trust the words scribbled on this card. A warning, or a trap? It could just as easily be one as the other, there would be no way of knowing until it was too late.

She stands very still, rolling the prospect between her fingers with the corners of the card, stands for so long she doesn’t even notice someone else approaching the front door.

Someone who clicks the lock with a smooth turn of a key, who opens the door quietly, who reveals themselves quite suddenly in the doorway, catches her cry of alarm with both hands raised in surrender.

“It’s just me,” Aisha says, very quick, kicking the door shut a little too hard behind her and wincing when it slams.

“Aisha,” Gasira says fretfully, tries to scramble some sense into the young woman’s unexpected presence. “It’s – it’s not Tuesday.”

“No,” Aisha says with true apology, as if she only wished she could control the days of the week.

She approaches slowly, looking pained when Gasira steps back deliberately out of her reach.

“Your husband asked me to come get you,” she says.

Gasira frowns, full to the brim with dizzying doubt and hope.

“Yusuf sent you?”

Aisha smiles, nodding.

She’s smart as a falcon, and very pretty, still carrying the softness of adolescence in her cheeks though she turned twenty-three last April. Her face is round and gentle, her black hair tightly braided and tucked today into a headscarf that is her signature shade of sunshine orange.

“Are you alright?” she asks, taking Gasira softly by the elbow, and seems relieved when she does not draw back again.

“Where is he?” Gasira asks instead of answering.

Aisha does not seem offended by her sharpness, only slides the grip of her hand up to Gasira’s shoulder.

“He is going to pick you up soon. He asked me to take care of Fennel, and the house, while you go away for little break. We need to pack you a bag. He said not to bring your phone, or his laptop. No technology, just to be safe.”

The phone call.

It must have been Yusuf, looking to warn her.

Gasira curses herself even as she offers a shaky nod to Aisha and allows herself to be guided up towards the bedroom.

She turns the card over in her hands, mostly watching as Aisha moves here and there, packing two cases, as well versed in the layout of this house as its occupants these days.

She used to come by twice a month at most, but ever since the last pregnancy, she’s come every week, just to make sure Gasira doesn’t do anything outrageously strenuous, like stand up too much. She’s become a good friend, these past months.

Her wicked teasing and her weakness for mandazi, sneaking crumbs to Fennel when she thinks Gasira isn’t watching.

Feeling more than a little rattled, Gasira forces herself to sit on the edge of the bed.

Aisha keeps up a constant of murmurs as she packs, and Gasira is tremendously grateful for the distracting sound. It’s soothing, her willowy combination of English chatter and Swahili muttering. She moves with such young strength, gently touching some part of Gasira every time she walks past, close to smothering her with attention.

All too soon, the bags are packed, and Aisha’s hands are holding both of Gasira’s between them, like a spell that cannot break, a promise that mustn’t.

“I will see you, and perhaps your son, when this has passed,” she says very slowly, with practised ease.

Gasira opens her mouth in a panic of denial and shock, only to be interrupted by a smirk from the younger woman as she glances down at Gasira’s protruding belly.

“I heard you speaking to him,” she says, a secret grin revealing the grace of her very being, creasing away her worry with love. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell a soul.”

It’s solemn, for all her smiles, and Gasira knows she isn’t just talking about her assumptions about the baby halfway grown inside her.

“You are a blessing,” Gasira says before kissing the girl’s forehead.

“Come, your husband will be here soon,” Aisha says, ducking her head shyly and hurrying Gasira down the stairs.

Gasira briefly considers going down to the studio to find Fennel.

Before she can, however, he appears at Aisha’s legs in the hallway, twisting around them and yowling with great enthusiasm.

“You spoil him,” Gasira tells her with a grin.

Aisha shrugs, unashamed as she bends down to pick him up. His purr gets louder, and he squirms happily in her grip.

“He’s easy to love,” Aisha replies, burying her nose in the cat’s scruff.

Gasira snorts, tickling the cat’s chin with her pinky.

“That he is,” she agrees, as a car pulls up onto the kerb outside.

.

.

In a small office in a large hospital, concealed by a locked door and undisturbed by watchful eyes, Lucas Aldman sits with his chemist, discussing what is to be done about the prisoners in their grasp.

The pain in his leg is as grounding as it is distracting.

Over the years, his hand has developed a reflexive motion to ease the tension in the trunk of his thigh.

It takes a ferocious amount of energy to withhold from reach for the spasm of his muscle as he sits on the edge of a folding metal chair. It’s been a long few years, the dash of victory bursting between aching stretches of insipid waiting.

There’s delirium in desperation.

Aldman sits on the chair and he listens to Ling’s plan.

“Make contact?” he scoffs before the man to finish. “We need to find them first?”

Ling quirks his brow, the shake of his head slow, measured.

“Hang the McLoughlin bitch out to dry,” the chemist says. “Hadley and Mahoney, at least, will come running.”

That much, he supposes, is surely true. Ling inclines his head in deferral.

“The girl doesn’t know where they are, I’m sure of it,” he adds.

From somewhere down the corrider, there’s the clattering of doors crashing open, the harried voices of doctors tossing orders back and forth. It’s not the busiest hospital in the area, this one, but no ER is never silent.

“How long will we be able to remain here undetected?” Ling asks, a tone shy of paranoid. He’s got a kind of trustworthy alertness about him. Asbestos hands and a natural scowl.

Aldman scrapes the heel of his hand down the tense meat of his leg, wincing as he smiles.

“The Dean was very grateful for how we handled the Graden Corp job,” he says reassuringly. “He has extended his welcome to us for as long as we need it.”

Ling relaxes, visibly, and so does Aldman. The tremor reaches down to his calf muscle in an uncomfortable spasm before easing away like smoke from a snuffed candle. He’s tired. He needs to think. He can’t afford to rush, not again, not after snagging his nets twice already in the past month.

He should have known better than to think Zumani could get anything done, with an ego that full and a wallet that empty.

Ling is distracted by the food they’ve abandoned on the table between them. He reaches over to pick at the greasy stir fry in his carton with little appetite.

“What about the staff?” Aldman asks, because Erik Ludlum might be able to speak for the security of his hospital, but that doesn’t make his staff trustworthy. Aldman doesn’t know how Ling came about them, but he has no room for complacency.

Ling is confused. He looks up, all question marks in his brow.

“What about them?” he asks.

“One of the nurses,” Aldman grunts. “She’s a bit twitchy. McFarlane.”

At that, a dawning look washes over the chemist. He lets out a false, focused _Ha_ of sound.

“McLaren,” Ling corrects, smug as a stuffed cat. “Yes, I like her. She has a certain rapport with the prisoners.”

Her face, Aldman thinks, perhaps deceptive. Those eyes with lights in them, a fawn caught in the glare of a speeding car.

“Really?” he asks, not too prideful to admit to his surprise.

Ling nods, smirking.

“She got you, too, huh?”

Aldman laughs, and recalls the way the young nurse had darted out from under his gaze so anxiously, on the day of their arrival. How she’d hovered at their bedsides so devotedly.

He shakes his head, reaching for his own stir fry, cold and lumpy, but better than nothing.

“Yeah,” he chuckles, more to himself than to his companion. “Yeah, she got me, too.”

.

.

It takes a few hours to find their footing. There’s friction, naturally. The snipped rub of static that runs through the undercurrent of hostility between them, all manner of misdemeanors, disclosed and otherwise.

Thankfully, the Conference Suite Two of the hotel offers enough space that the four men eventually fall into something close enough to a productive, if not entirely comfortable rhythm.

Cobb has commandeered a quarter, whereby he can interview Ezra in relative privacy. Their voices remain a low murmur. Cobb’s, a constant line of questions and consolation; Ezra’s more hesitant, stops and starts of syllables cut short by self-doubt.

Arthur, meanwhile, has surrounded himself with just about enough informational firepower to kickstart a new intelligence taskforce.

He has two laptops open, whirring quietly, and seems to have produced from nowhere entire paper dossiers on all manner pf people, places and jobs. He’s diligently working his way through the piles, distributing as he goes. He’s already filled the waste basket twice.

Eames, for his part, is dutifully playing the role of research assistant very well, just like his old Oxford professors told him he’d never live up to.

In as much as, he has made Arthur two fresh pots of coffee, organized some files, replaced the printer toner once and opened lots of tabs on his own laptop, at least half of which are relevant to the case at hand.

It’s pretty much a wasted effort, though. His mind is very far away from Portland, and it’s getting harder with every minute not to show it.

The paper in his pocket is burning through the cotton of his shirt. He can feel its words tattooing themselves into his chest, right over his heart, and if that’s not a metaphor too sharp to consider, he doesn’t know what is.

The urge to take it out is overwhelming. Except he daren’t do so in front of Ezra, or even Cobb, and there’s absolutely no way he can convince Arthur to go somewhere more private that won’t sound either deeply suspicious or like a thinly veiled invitation for sex.

Not that Eames has a problem with either of the two other men thinking that’s what they’re doing, of course.

No, the problem is that Arthur will definitely not be pried from his desk if he thinks Eames’ intentions are in any way nefarious. Which, to be fair to Arthur, on almost any other occasion they probably would be.

(Eames is mostly sure his proudest achievement to date is still getting his hand down Arthur’s pants in the break room of an office they were using while three other team members were snowballing ideas around the room adjacent.)

He watches the pink shell of Arthur’s ear, and the slide of his jaw, the only parts of his face visible from this angle; tries to distract himself with the memory of swallowing Arthur’s belligerent, wonderfully self-conscious groans to keep them from escaping.

(He’s also mostly sure Arthur will deny it ever happening until his dying day. Probably because one of those team members had been Dominick Cobb.)

Across the room, Ezra makes a badly muffled sound of vehement anger, and Eames doesn’t look around. Arthur almost does; his chin dips downwards, but as if he knows he’s being watched he expertly turns the movement into checking something from a list of dates sitting near his hand.

Eames looks back at his laptop screen, his vision swimming.

He can hear, like a death knell, the dial tone of his phone when he’d ducked out of the room the last time he’d dared.

Arthur had glared at him as he left, looking equal parts betrayed and soft, a skill he’s cultivated well over the years.

Eames hasn’t been able to bring himself to try again.

He’s trying very hard to convince himself it’s to avoid Arthur’s ire or, even worse, being called out on it. He’s trying very hard not to imagine what will happen if he calls again and gets another dial tone.

So, instead of looking much further than his latest contact with Leon from the past twelve months, Eames finds himself forcibly drifting his mind to other pressing matters. Ones that feel, if not exactly easier, at the very least less burdensome.

Like Ariadne, and the likelihood Arthur is inadvertently lying when he says she’s on her way.

Arthur had not reacted very well to Eames’ suggestion that she might not make it to Portland.

In fact, he had been downright indignant about it, and subsequently petrified. Unfortunately, both of these states of being manifest identically in Arthur as the default setting of _Shut down on everyone, consume caffeine, stew in misery._

Not to mention his response to Eames’ suggestion that, seeing as how Leon is only interested in cutting off _his_ bollocks and blowing _his_ brains out, perhaps he should fly solo to head him off at the pass.

Unsurprisingly, Ezra had been very on board with this plan, but had been promptly shouted down by a belligerent Arthur and Cobb, who both thought splitting up was a terrible idea.

Personally, Eames still hasn’t ruled the option out. He’s keeping that one to himself for now, though. There’s no sense in actively picking fights with Arthur at this point.

Across the room, which is flooded with molten gold lamplight and smells strongly of ground coffee and the pizzas they’d had sent up at around half-past ten, Cobb puts down his book and slaps his knees.

Eames looks up, not bothering to openly misread the cue for what it is.

Arthur, predictably, does not.

“The alcohol should be out of our systems by now,” Cobb says. “David and I are going to go under, have a look around.”

Eames does not bring attention to Cobb’s sudden first-name-basis with their possible in-house red herring.

He nods, glancing instinctively at his watch. It’s crept a little past two in the morning.

Ezra looks quite frankly exhausted and even Cobb is a little worse for wear.

Arthur, the knob, looks like he’d be happy to keep trawling laboriously through his research for another six hours before so much as _yawning._

Without giving any verbal indication he’s been listening, barely glancing away from his screens, Arthur fishes two thin folders out of a pile and tosses them to Eames.

They’re measurements and calculations, one for Cobb and another for Ezra. Their respective somnacin doses and metabolic rates have been underlined in Arthur in true Arthurian fashion, and Eames is quite overcome with the urge to snog him silly.

He doesn’t.

Instead, he hands the paperclipped files to Cobb like the dutiful assistant he is.

“Just the standard formula,” he says needlessly. “Just in case.”

“Yeah,” Cobb agrees, a little distracted as he fiddles with the lockbox containing the somnacin vials.

Eames doubts even Cobb would risk using anything else, anyway. He’s never met a dreamer that ever made the mistake of messing around with formula types with alcohol swimming through their veins, or anything else not vetted by a chemist, really.

Eames himself has only ever used the PASIV once without letting a generous measure of cocaine flush out of his system first, and safe to say it would take nothing short of a life or death situation to make him do it again.

He watches idly, not even pretending to work now as Cobb readies the PASIV, and it occurs to Eames that’s _his_ PASIV. The one Arthur had taken from the flat in Marseille.

The flat. A demolition site, now, and perhaps Madame –

Eames pushes the thought away with violence. Returns his gaze to his laptop screen with aggressive attention and thinks about how he could track Ariadne’s movements so far with her Burridge passport that he’d made for her.

Something of a dreamshare graduation gift, as it were.

“Hey, Eames,” Arthur voice’s interrupts his train of thought.

“Mmm?” he asks, and Arthur beckons him over with a flurried hand.

“I’ve found something.”

“Something good, I hope,” Eames drawls.

Arthur’s non-response is hardly promising.

Eames, who had claimed the only tall-backed computer chair in the room on the grounds of having only one fully-functioning kneecap, rolls his way over to sit behind Arthur, staring over his shoulder with his forearms on the back of Arthur’s chair.

“What is it?” he asks, just as Arthur leans back far enough that he’s pressing against Eames’ arms.

It’s a quiet gesture, the warm line of his back, and the closeness of his neck to Eames’ face. He could lean down and kiss the junction of his shoulder, if he wanted.

He does want to. Badly.

Instead, he moves his fingers out, just a little, just to press back at Arthur in return, still looking at the series of thumbnails on the left screen that have caught Arthur’s attention.

Arthur turns ninety degrees in his chair, so he can half look at Eames.

Actually, he _does_ look quite tired, too. His face is pale and drawn; he’s been pulling at his shirt collar by the look of it.

“I found something weird in Athens.”

“Greece?”

“West Virginia.”

Eames makes a dipped sound of disdain, but it’s mostly just to see Arthur’s eyes roll, very close to his own.

“Go on,” he says, which is as close to a deferral as he’s will to give.

“Two men shot dead. A third arrested, gun in hand. A fourth man was searched for but the police found nothing.”

Eames raises an eyebrow.

“That’s weird _how?”_

Arthur’s mouth twists briefly around his reply.

“The police let the third guy go. Couldn’t charge him due to insufficient evidence.”

Eames blinks. He looks at Arthur’s laptop, and sees he’s gotten into the local police’s database. He resists the urge to call Ezra over and flaunt his precious Lieutenant Hewitt’s wayward methods with some difficulty.

“They didn’t have enough evidence from a literal smoking gun?”

Arthur nods, looking uneasy. It’s never suited him.

“I know,” he says. “They dropped the case. Nothing further on it.”

“When was this?”

“Two weeks ago.”

Eames looks at the images on the screen. They’re too small to make anything out, each one labelled with a serial number.

Without really meaning to, he drops his chin on Arthur’s shoulder.

“Do we know any of them?”

When Arthur turns his head a few centimetres, the cut of his jaw brushes against Eames’ cheekbone. He’s incredibly warm.

“No,” he says, reaching to the touchpad of the laptop and bringing up one of the thumbnails to full size. “But look who shows up in the security cam footage they dug out.”

The photo is poor quality; Eames can just about make out the features of one of the men standing in the street corner, caught by the streetlight. A second man’s face is hidden by a bright green cap as he stares at the ground.

Further away, however, half in shadow, is a woman.

Eames would recognise that red plait anywhere. He sits up properly in surprise, pulling away from Arthur and missing his warmth instantly.

“Is that –”

“Yep,” Arthur says, clicking onto the next image.

This one is easier to make out.

Olivier’s full profile is in view, her hair drawn back behind her ears. Eames can’t tell if he’s imagining the look of panic he can see in her face.

“It’s like she’s not even trying to hide,” Arthur says, sounding frustrated. Eames doubts he’s only referring to the bright copper beacon of her hair.

“She wanted to be found?” he says with pensive apprehension.

Arthur shrugs; he’s nearly vibrating with the energy of his confusion.

“I’m pretty sure she killed the two men. Whoever shut down the police investigation has a long arm, and-or very deep pockets. They don’t want her dead, and they don’t want law enforcement involved.”

Eames stares at the grainy image of Olivier, resolutely refusing the deep pang of longing he feels at the sight of her, fuzzy and half-shadowed as the photograph is.

“So, she knows she’s being followed,” he guesses, trying and failing to garner some further clue from her pixelated freckles. “She lures them closer, causes a scene and uses the distraction to slip away. Where? To a safehouse?”

Arthur frowns, turning his back to the screen to look at Eames properly.

“Seems a strange place to make her move. She’s hours from an international airport. She’s got no safehouses that side of the States and as far as I know, no relevant contacts within a two-hundred-kilometre radius.”

“No, she doesn’t,” Eames confirms, confident in his knowledge of as much, at least.

He and Olivier might not be as close as they once were, but he still _knows_ her.

“Do you think she’ll try make contact?” Arthur asks.

It is as undeniable as it is unfathomable, how much Eames wishes she would. Not least of all because she’s pretty much the only person capable of stopping Leon in his tracks.

Hell, Leon wanted to gut Eames before they even knew each other. Nothing more or less than Olivier’s interference had kept that from happening.

“No,” he says. “She knows she’s being watched. She knows she’d be leading them straight to us. She hasn’t even contacted Calvin.”

Arthur doesn’t comment on this.

Arthur has stopped acknowledging he’s aware of Calvin Ross’ existence at all, whenever possible, so this is hardly surprising.

He returns to the police report.

Across the room, Cobb says,

“Eames, do you mind giving us a hand?”

He looks over to see Cobb fixing an IV into the crook of his wrist.

“Certainly,” he says with grim cheer, pushing his chair halfway across the room with a shove, using Arthur’s chair for leverage.

Ezra is settled along the low sofa pushed up against the wall, while Cobb takes a seat in a chair near the window hidden behind heavy, blackout curtains.

The PASIV sits on a square coffee table between them. It’s set for twenty minutes.

This seems a little excessive for an initial recon, but Eames isn’t about to say anything. He realises, quite abruptly, Cobb might have just given him an inadvertent window of opportunity.

Assuming Ezra doesn’t muck it up two minutes in, that is.

He sends both men down with a press of the vial release, their eyes closing simultaneously.

There’s an eerie silence to dropping others into a dream; something anticlimactic and unnerving in the way their eyelids slide shut with unnatural speed, as if death has stolen them in an instant.

Eames watches them, waiting with his breath tight behind his diaphragm for fifteen seconds, just to make sure they’ve gone down stable.

Reassured, he nudges his chair back to the other side of the room, silent across the thick midnight blue carpet.

Arthur is clicking with a vengeance again.

Eames pushes as close as he dares, which still leaves him several feet away, caught off-guard by the suddenness of their solitude.

Now that chance has presented him with a moment’s reprieve, Eames can feel his throat constricting with a very specific kind of nausea. An inescapable noose of fear has snaked its way around his neck.

“A-Arthur,” he says, cursing himself inwardly at the stumble.

Arthur has turned around to look at him, wide-eyed with worry, before he can so much as finish his name.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, eyes darting to the sleeping men and back again.

He knows it’s no coincidence Eames has waited until they’re alone to speak. His face, already pale, has lost what little colour was left.

There’s a phantom dial tone ringing horribly in Eames’ ears. He swallows the barbs in his mouth.

Barely containing the tremble in his fingers, Eames plucks the paper out of his shirt pocket and holds it out, still folded, to Arthur, who takes it with a robotic, automatic movement.

He opens it, scans the list with a flick of his eyes and looks up, confusion etched deep into his open frown.

“Leon said something else,” Eames tells him. His mouth goes dry even to think it. “He said that he’d killed –”

He pauses. Can’t conjure the words through his teeth and in his hesitation, Arthur moves his own chair closer, pushing the legs roughly over the carpet.

Their knees are almost touching and Eames craves it, starves for it, but he can’t reach out. He’s still looking at the list, safe in Arthur’s grip.

“He’s killed two women who know about my Nicks identity.”

It engulfs him like a cresting wave, the way Arthur looks back down at the note, a flicker of understanding.

“That’s a list of all the women who know me by the name Nicks. Or know of it.”

Arthur nods slowly, as Eames swallows down the hornets biting at his mouth.

“Can you –” but it jangles and jumbles, comes out wrong, comes out backwards and painful. “Mombasa. I need to – I tried but – I – I can’t.”

He stops, pushing heel of his hand to the bridge of his nose.

He flinches when Arthur’s hand lands on his uninjured knee.

“Of course,” Arthur says, in a voice even lower than Eames’ stutter. “But Eames –”

“I can’t,” Eames chokes, can’t stifle the tremor that rattles the denial out of him. Shaking his head, his teeth aching in his gums. “Arthur I tried – she, she didn’t pick up. She didn’t. And I can’t – if she’s – she _can’t_ be dead. You don’t – I can’t bear it. Arthur, I need – need you to check, OK? Please, I know. I’m – I’m a fucking coward but I need –”

“Eames, what, _no,”_ Arthur says in a startled voice and it flashes through Eames, hurt and rejection, he recoils from it.

Only, Arthur takes hold of Eames’ hand, then. Warm and strong and there, tugging him closer. Eames feels his knuckles against Arthur’s mouth, the vibration of his words kitting into his skin.

“You’re not a coward, Eames,” Arthur says, which is an awfully kind lie. “Listen to me, alright? Look at me. Eames.”

Eames swallows again, and manages to catch Arthur’s eye for a moment, only to drop his burning gaze hard as lit coal in his hands.

He can’t stand that look on Arthur’s face. That _faith._

“I understand, OK?”

He doesn’t, though. He thinks he does, but he doesn’t.

Because Eames has never told him. He’s never told anyone.

“Arthur, she – she _can’t_ be dead. You don’t – we were. When we were kids. She was. She saved my _life._ I’d have – I’d never have – God, you don’t know what she did.”

Even with his eyes clamped shut in shame, he can see Arthur’s face. It’s imprinted in his eyelids, that face. It’s the only face he’ll never lose, not even when his own is gone from his mind.

Arthur’s still holding his hand, and he tries to take the other, tries to pull them both towards him. Eames resists, doesn’t want to be brought close if he’s only going to get pushed away.

He can still hear the dial tone, it’s drowning out everything, everything except Arthur’s voice, cutting clean through the panic with doubt and confusion.

“I thought you met her in Matosinhos?” he says.

Despite the distrust in his voice, he doesn’t let go of Eames’ fingers. If anything, he tightens his hold as Eames shakes his head.

“Our mums –” he tries, but he doesn’t have the vocabulary, in this or any language for the truth of these things. He never has. “We grew up together. Lost – we lost touch when we were thirteen. I found her when we were in our twenties.”

When the silence that ensues stretches outwards, Eames opens his eyes and finds himself looking at a brand new expression on Arthur’s face.

Arthur seems to be searching him for something, maybe fresh lies, or maybe another revelation. His eyes are soft as honey, and his mouth is slack with questions and never mind unforgotten, his is the only face Eames wants to _look_ at for the rest of his life.

However short a life that might end up being, he is forced to acknowledge.

He grips Arthur’s hand in return, suddenly afraid of him pulling away.

Except, of course, Arthur just grips back, and a faint smile ghosts over his lovely face. He kisses Eames’ knuckles again, as if each one is precious.

“Does Yusuf know?” he asks warily.

Eames gives a deflated, pitiful laugh, shaking his head, dizzy with the loss of a secret he’s kept forever.

“We never told anyone.”

Arthur cocks his head, scrutinising him. It’s less tender now, a little closer to the way he’d looked at the photos of Olivier.

“Did you think I’d be mad at you for hiding it?”

Eames shrugs lopsidedly. Honestly, he’d never envisioned ever telling Arthur, so it was a moot point.

Except, there’s the way Arthur pushes out of his seat, just far enough to lean over and kiss him. His mouth is warm, the press of him perfect and familiar; he tastes of coffee and pepperoni.

When he draws back, he’s all dimples and eyelashes and the haze of terror in Eames’ chest is ever so slightly lessened.

“It’s late,” he says, before he stands, pulling Eames up to his feet. “Go back to the room. I’ll join you after they wake up.”

Eames doesn’t even question it.

Pulling out his mobile from his pocket, he hands it to Arthur and leans in to kiss the corner of his mouth.

He knows Arthur can feel the tremor running through him. There’s no sense in hiding it, even if he could.

Arthur doesn’t realise it yet, but Eames has given away more than his whole hand in the space of two minutes. Soon, though. Soon, he’ll realise, and will unravel all the lies Eames has kept hidden in plain sight for over a decade.

Somewhere deep within, muted by the rage of white noise that fills his being, worsening with every moment, there’s an ugly desperation, a hunger for it. The fallout, explosive as it might be.

Or, perhaps it will be a quiet thing, a whimpering of an ending, debris in the tide.

“Go,” Arthur says none too gently, the list clutched in his left hand like a religious scroll.

Eames limps tiredly towards the door. He can’t think, his mind awash with the steel wool tension he’s been carrying in the place of common sense since Leon called.

In his mind’s eye, there is only her face, her darling face.

Twelve years old, a graze on her chin and rope burns on her hands, grinning with a stolen orange ice lolly in one hand and a man’s shiny leather wallet in the other.

“You’re losing, Nicks,” she’d say proudly, bubbling with laughter, juice smeared up her cheek that she’d rub away with her bare forearm.

“Slow but steady wins the race, ‘Sira,” he’d retort with a teasing smirk, before pulling out two wallets and a snickers bar from his pockets.

Hot-headed and rowdy, they’d shriek with laughter at each other, kicking pigeons and sharing sweets behind the biggest tents.

“Eames,” Arthur says, now, when he gets to the door.

He looks wearily over his shoulder. The room is fractured in two, split wet in his eyes. Two Arthurs, each one sorrowful, each one good and beautiful.

“Yeah?” he says thickly.

“Do you seriously think Yusuf would let anything happen to her?”

Eames tries to respond, he really does.

It strangles him, his tangled reply. He has to press his lips together to keep in everything else before it tumbles out of him.

He leaves the room, the door closing quietly behind him.

For the first time in days, he’s found something that hurts worse than Arthur’s betrayal. Something more treacherous than Arthur’s deceit, than Ezra’s presence, than Cobb’s intrusive curiosity.

It shreds itself apart in his chest; razors in his lungs.

.

.


End file.
